


the map of my heart, the landscape after cruelty

by stellahibernis



Series: this is not how we fall in love [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AoU compliant when it comes to plot, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, It Gets Better, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Slow Burn, at the beginning, neither one of them is fine, when it comes to characters i aim more at the Cap movies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-04-09 16:24:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 69,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4356095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellahibernis/pseuds/stellahibernis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>There’s another thread of memory, one that’s as broken as everything else, but isn’t made of pain and despair, even if it connects to those things sometimes. There are warm summer days and leaning on a steady shoulder by campfire, slender fingers holding a pen and blue eyes that are sometimes too bright with fever. There’s a voice that somehow stayed the same when almost everything changed</i>.</p><p><i>There is a name, and it’s not his name. It’s more important than that</i>.</p><p>Bucky tries to piece together the threads of memory that are something other than red with blood.</p><p>Steve tries to figure out how to be Steve Rogers in this new world where everyone knows his name and no one remembers what it meant before Captain America.</p><p>They are both looking for the same thing, really.</p><p>Steve and Bucky 2015 - 2016</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. leave me blurry and fall toward me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon compliant with everything up to Avengers: Age of Ultron, nothing afterwards.
> 
> Rating will go up in the later parts, although I'm not quite sure yet precisely what it'll end up being.
> 
> ETA: The rating is now final, applies mostly to chapter 8, I'm serious about the slow burn.
> 
> Content warning: short mention of suicidal thoughts in the first chapter.

He’s just a shadow on top of the building, insignificant compared to the mass of concrete and glass and steel underneath him. It wasn’t difficult at all to get to the roof unnoticed, not for him, not with this building. It’s the one he’s looking at now that would be more difficult to reach. He can see some of the security measures and knows there are more. Still, he’s fairly sure he could make it quite far if he needed to. If he wanted to.

He doesn’t. Not anymore. There isn’t anything he cares about in the Stark tower, formerly known as Avengers tower, formerly known as Stark tower. The only superhero in there has retired, or at least says he has. Tony Stark has decommissioned his suits and it’s only regular helicopters, not quinjets, that land on the roof. He doesn’t believe for a second that Iron Man wouldn’t make an appearance if there was a threat to the building. He’s not going to try his luck. He doesn’t care about Iron Man.

Tony Stark is different, he can’t say he doesn’t care, not when there are strands of memory from decades ago that sometimes surface from the mess that is his head. They are blood red threads of fire and bullets and death that he keeps pulling on, even when he doesn’t want to. There is nothing he wants to say to Stark right now, even with the knowledge that comes from the parts he's managed to piece together. The past can't be changed anyway, and there are still things he has to do before he'll risk Tony Stark's anger.

He pushes the fragments of memory away and turns to look towards north where he knows the Avengers have their new headquarters, and then to south, towards Brooklyn. There’s another thread of memory, one that’s as broken as everything else, but isn’t made of pain and despair, even if it connects to those things sometimes. There are warm summer days and leaning on a steady shoulder by campfire, slender fingers holding a pen and blue eyes that are sometimes too bright with fever. There’s a voice that somehow stayed the same when almost everything changed. Those are things connecting the thread, but it’s made of something else, something he hasn’t got a name for. It's important, that much he knows. And there are words, said by the man with his voice and repeated by that other voice; barely audible, laced with pain.

It’s always like that; he thinks he has all the pieces, but it’s hard to make sense of them when they are a mixed jumble in his head. It’s hard to find ones that fit together, and even harder to understand what the memories mean. Hardest of all is to trust himself when he thinks he does understand.

He has pieces of everything, but nothing whole. There are faces and places and feelings that slot in between them and never seem to connect. He knows names, even names that belong to him, or at least seem like they should belong to him. Maybe they don’t, maybe the man they belong to has been dead for seven decades and maybe he’s just a ghost pretending.

It is so hard, has been so hard for the past year and more, to try and make sense of it all, to try and make a life out of pieces that he has left. It never feels like they are enough and sometimes he doesn’t even know why he bothers to try, when he doesn’t seem to get anywhere. Nothing seems to make sense. Other days it feels like too many things make sense, and there is the terrible clarity, the knowing of what he has done and more than that, knowing what it all means. Those days are worse.

And it would be easy, so very easy to make it stop, to let go. He has knives and bullets and guns and grenades and the steep drop towards the waiting concrete. It would be easy to fall, and the fall would kill him if he let it, even if another fall didn’t. Even if the thought of wind in his ears still brings the taste of iron to his tongue. He doesn’t let himself fall. Instead he lets himself back in the building and is on the street without anyone noticing.

There is a name, and it’s not his name. It’s more important than that.

He makes his way towards south.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Titles of the fic and all the chapters are from Richard Siken's _Snow and Dirty Water_.
> 
> This first chapter is practically a prologue, the actual chapters will be much longer.
> 
> I created this as a part of a series straight away, even though there's nothing else yet. This is the main story, but there will be others set before and after. I might post some of them between chapters, depending on how the writing comes along.


	2. a garden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technical note, although these should be pretty self evident from the text; the three stars means there's a break in the narrative but the POV stays the same, the horizontal line marks a change in the POV.

The stack of pizzas on the counter is getting smaller and people are spreading out in the cafeteria into groups of various sizes. Steve comes in last still absorbed in printouts of the general state of the world. It seems quiet, at least there doesn’t seem to be anything that would require Avengers to intervene. In the aftermath of Ultron and everything related to it most governments want to deal with their problems on their own as much as they can and only ask superheroes if there is something they absolutely cannot handle. Of course sometimes they notice the problem first and if it’s something out of ordinary, take care of it on their own without any request for assistance.

They do inform the authorities of their actions, because Steve doesn’t believe in keeping people in the dark. In his experience people tend to be able to handle quite a lot more than they are generally believed to, and more than that, usually rise to the occasion when given the chance. Not everyone had agreed outright on everything he wanted to establish, and he’d had to do some fast talking, and it included also listening to their input and getting advice, but now they had the procedure down to one he likes and feels is fair to everyone involved. Mostly local authorities seem to agree to it; it’s the government they have harder time convincing. There are people who think the Avengers should be under the command of the Senate or the military or whichever branch of government is the flavor of the week, but it’s something Steve continues to be adamantly against. They are working on creating a system where the World Security Council, regrouped after HYDRA attacks, will audit their procedures, but won’t have straight commanding power over them. It could work, Steve thinks.

He folds the papers into his pocket and sits in the empty chair next to Nat and Sam who are discussing music, apparently something to do with jazz in 1960s. Steve hasn’t been very thorough about getting to know the music he’s missed, mostly he just finds things he likes by accident or from recommendations. He relaxes in the chair and lets the noise of all the conversations around wash over him.

It has been relatively quiet after the whole thing with Ultron had been resolved, as much as it could be anyway. He knows there will be repercussions for years. They haven’t found any more HYDRA activity, nor any other kind of activity either, everything has been quiet and normal. Except this week there were some robots to deal with, since some rich asshole had decided to try and emulate Tony Stark except entirely without good intentions. It made the last four days hectic, and he hasn’t been home at all since Monday, and he’s beginning to feel it.

The mood is relaxed and everyone is feeling celebratory, which they’ve definitely earned. All things considered, they managed to take down the robots and limit casualties very well, and their new operation had proven effective with this first more serious test. Steve is happy and proud of what they’ve achieved in such a short time, although he has a list of things he noticed still need adjusting. It’s not the time for that, though, it can wait over the weekend. He tries to push away thoughts of work and just enjoy the mood, but it’s not really working. Even if everyone is happy and the tension they all felt during the last few days is gone, he can’t relax like this. Just being around so many people feels abrasive right now, and after a while he gives up and heads home. He declines the invitations to go to a club (and tells a few enthusiasts that no, they can’t take the quinjet even if somebody promises to stay sober, the only ones flying should be those who can do it without equipment).

He already feels better on his bike on the way home. It’s the kind of warm as it only gets on late summer evenings, and the wind isn’t too much even if he hasn’t fully closet his jacket. The shield is a familiar weight at his back. He knows it attracts attention, although less since he started covering it, but he still always takes it with him instead of leaving it back at work. It’s the only piece of his uniform that has stayed the same (well, mostly same, trust Stark to add electromagnets for easy retrieval), and in many ways it has become part of him, so much that it feels wrong to just leave it. Hence it goes where he goes.

Sometimes he thinks that is exactly his problem; that he cannot leave the shield.

His apartment in Brooklyn is dark in the twilight, stuffy after being empty several warm days. He opens a few windows to air it out in the old fashioned way instead of just putting on the air conditioning, and then fills a jug from the tap and goes to balcony to see to his plants. They are all from Natasha, who breezes in and drops one on the table and then demands coffee, or sometimes one just appears on the balcony. Some of them are herbs, some are flowers, and he’s managed to keep them alive pretty well, even though he doesn’t really know that much about plants. Google has been his friend at that. Some of them are a little worse for wear now that he hasn’t watered them for a few days, but maybe they’ll revive.

Plants are just the latest among the things Natasha has decided he should be interested in and has made it known by metaphorically flinging them right at his head. For the first few months their relationship had been mostly professional. They’d gotten along well right from the start and he’d instinctively known he could rely on her judgment, but they had interacted only at work. Then one Saturday she’d appeared on his doorstep with a cake, and that had started the restaurant and coffeeshop recommendations. After a while it had been movies, both new and old. They’d watched some together, although Steve had adamantly refused to see any Disney movies with her. She’d looked like she had wanted to prod for the reason to that but had thankfully backed away, because Steve didn’t know how to explain.

Next, as she had apparently decided he needed a life outside work, it had been all kinds of activities and clubs (he hadn’t really taken to anything, hadn’t even felt like trying if he’s honest). Then it had been music, and after that (his least favorite) women he should date. That hadn’t gone anywhere either; it felt weird to him when he still visited Peggy at least twice a week, even though she had moved on herself and been actually married. It had only stopped when he’d found out the neighbor nurse Kate, actually Agent 13 Sharon, was in fact Sharon Carter, and it had been a whole another level weird for him. At that point he’d explained it to Nat, who had moved on to books, then to restaurants and coffeeshops in New York, since they all moved there, and now it was apparently plants. He didn’t even want to think what would be next, he kind of feared another round of potential dates was coming since Sam seemed to be thinking that was in order as well.

A questioning meow shakes Steve out of his reverie, and there’s another familiar thing. The black and white cat had just appeared on his balcony one day, apparently after food. It had been a little on the thin side, but looked healthy enough. Steve had asked about it from his neighbors who said it didn’t seem to belong to anyone, and that it lived somewhere in the building. Another bout of googling later Steve had found out about cat foods, including the fact that normal milk wasn’t a good idea, which he definitely wouldn’t have figured out by himself. Now he was keeping a bowl of water and another of kibble in the corner of the balcony, and when he saw it he tended to give it either raw meat or wet food as well. It had gotten less thin since he started feeding it, and let him pet it but not pick it up. It wouldn’t come in either, even if he left the door open. He’d thought about naming the cat, but it never felt quite right, it wasn’t his cat after all.

He refills the cat’s feeding bowls, opens a can of wet food for it and watches it attack the food with relish. While watching he idly wonders what it used to eat before and what it eats when he’s away. He guesses there are enough rats and pigeons for it to get easily by, but it probably isn’t that healthy. He wonders if he should try and take it to the vet but seeing that it still doesn’t fully trust him he decides not to push it, especially since it seems to be in good health.

It’s almost dark already and suddenly he feels tired, the way he rarely does. He usually keeps to normal hours, but his enhanced physique means he doesn’t tire as easily as regular human beings and can get by on considerably less sleep. Still, he hasn’t slept that many hours since Monday and it seems like he’s hit a limit. He takes a shower and goes to bed after closing windows and turning on the air conditioning. Lastly a chime of incoming text reminds him to turn his phone on silent, his team is notorious for drunken texting him if he’s not with them.

***

Steve wakes up just after six feeling fully rested but a little stiff. He pulls a pair of jogging pants and a shirt on, drinks a glass of water and heads out for his run. He only makes it a few steps before there’s a sudden feeling of being watched, and he stops to scan the environment even without thinking. He doesn’t see anyone, only the cat is in the process of climbing to his balcony and a little flock of birds takes off from the roof of the neighboring building. The feeling is gone, and he supposes he must still be on the edge after the week. Nothing a good run won’t cure.

He heads for the waterfront and runs with the ocean at his sights for most of the way. It’s a clear day and the rising sun reflects from the steadily peaking waves. Looking at the ocean always calms him, the noise drowns his busy thoughts and everything seems small and insignificant compared to the blue stretching out into horizon. It’s easy to let go of everything for a moment and just run.

When he comes back, sun is well up and his neighbors are moving about. The building is an old repurposed factory, and his is one of few actual apartments. There are other spaces; near him is an artist’s studio, down the hall is what seems to be the gathering place for some sort of crafts club, and at the bottom is a bicycle shop and a renovation business next to the garages. They seem to be doing well, despite the fact that the building is a little out of the way and quiet (which was one of the reasons Steve had chosen it from all those the real estate agent Pepper had recommended him had suggested), but these days with internet visibility on the street is less important, he guesses.

He makes breakfast and eats it on the balcony, feeding bits of his eggs to the cat that flops down to lie on the table. He spends most of the day doing house work, visiting the market and grocery store and working on his bike. It’s late afternoon when he remembers to check his phone, and as expected, there are several messages from his team mates but nothing he’d need to react to.

The last one is from Sam, a selfie of him with the group and text “should have come”. Everyone seems to be having fun, but he doesn’t regret. He knows Sam and Natasha think he should socialize more and, well, they’re not exactly wrong about it; he knows he’s spending a lot of time alone. It’s just hard to make new friends, when everyone already knows about him, and don’t necessarily realize that it doesn’t mean they actually know him as a person. It’s a hurdle that has to be crossed every time, and it gets tiresome. His team mates are smarter than that, but it doesn’t change the fact that however well they have gotten to know him, he was still Captain America first to them, it’s always there at the back. That’s why he’s always liked Thor’s company, he didn’t have that previous information, no image in his head of what he should be. It was almost the opposite when it came to Thor, really, but Steve had learned from his own experience and tried not to fall to the patterns that irritated him in others.

Besides, there’s something he’s always found hard to explain to a lot of people. Namely that the reason he sometimes wants to be alone isn’t that he ultimately doesn’t like company (or that he disapproves of parties and fun, as some people seem to think), because he does like it. He likes spending time with his friends talking, having fun, even arguing. It’s just that he doesn’t want to do it all the time, actually can’t do it all the time. After a while he just needs some time alone to recover, and it is difficult to explain how it is for him to people who don’t feel like that, who are ready for company any time. Out of all the Avengers he knows Bruce understood it and probably felt very much the same, although he never actually had to explain it to anyone, because if he seemed grumpy people tended to leave him alone, even Tony after their initial meeting on the helicarrier. On the other hand people seem to assume that Steve is very outgoing, what with his USO background and all, and often take his time alone as a bigger problem than it is (he knows it’s not all good, but neither is he so down and depressed as they seem to think).

Even with Bucky it had taken some adjustment when they moved together after Steve’s mother died. Suddenly they basically lived in each other’s pockets, and even if they had always spent a lot of time together, it had been the first time it had been a bit too much for Steve. Not living together but the fact that they needed to be doing something all the time. Bucky was very outgoing by nature (although less so after Steve found him in Austria), and had been pretty determined to drag Steve along wherever he went. It had taken a lot of explaining, but Bucky had listened and if not exactly understood, he had given Steve the space he needed. It had helped that even when Steve wanted to be alone, he didn’t mind Bucky’s presence, they just didn’t talk as much as usual. It had been the same with his mother, and he guessed that somehow these two people closest to him had crossed some invisible threshold that let them fit in his life so well that they were really a part of him.

Back in time, he spent a lot of time alone drawing or painting, and he had always known it was a necessary part of the creative process for him. He needed contact with people and the world in general, but he also needed the isolation, to be just by himself. Both were essential. That was partly the reason he had drawn less during the war, even when they were waiting and basically bored out of their skulls. It was harder to find time alone, and even though he had adjusted due to necessity, he had found he didn’t have energy to do more than doodle some sketches on occasion.

After he had woken up in the future (and it still kind of feels like that, it doesn’t feel like his time, because there always seems to be something missing) he’d never taken up drawing at all. For some reason no one had suggested it, even though they’d recommended a lot of different activities for him (the only one that had stuck was working on his bike instead of letting someone else do it for him, although he’d done some of that already in the war since specialised mechanics weren’t usually available), and then he’d gotten drawn into fighting aliens and working at SHIELD and had kind of forgotten about it. Sometimes he thinks he might start again, but he never remembers when he’s in the city and near an art store. These days he mostly just reads, both nonfiction and fiction to catch up.

He takes his book outside and settles into his chair to read. After a while the cat hops onto his lap and settles there like it’s something it always does and not the first time. He probably should think of a name for it.

***

On Sunday Steve wakes up feeling refreshed. After his run and breakfast he digs into the less pleasant part of learning what had happened during his overly long nap. The SHIELD files had been removed from the internet (as much as they could do so anyway), but Tony had made a copy of them on his private server, and all the Avengers had access to it. Sifting through everything is time consuming, even with the new directory and search function that JARVIS had created, but Steve doesn’t ask for help with it. Sometimes he wonders if Tony has searched for what had happened to his parents, and whether there is detailed information of the incident. He hasn’t asked.

What he is doing is somehow private, something he feels like he has to do by himself. The HYDRA files aren’t organised normally since they were supposed to be hidden, and the files concerning Winter Soldier are even more fragmented, but during the months he’s spent looking through them, he’s noticed a pattern to it, and it makes finding them among all the data easier. It’s still slow, and he can’t dedicate that much time to it especially now that he is truly running the team and trying to manage things so that they will be trusted at least somewhat by the regular authorities. Sam and Natasha forward him what they find, but they have their own lives and things they need to do, even though they support him in this. He knows it’s at least partly because they know he won’t stop, and think it’s better than to let him do it alone. And he is grateful for that, he really is, because he would understand if neither of them wanted nothing at all to do with Winter Soldier ever again. Because that is what he is to them, all history lessons aside.

Looking at the files is difficult, because each one of them adds to the picture of decades of suffering, losing everything that makes one human, having all of that taken from him, and being treated like an object, albeit one with a heartbeat and capability to act like a human being. Steve has looked through medical records, familiar enough with his own to see the similarities and differences. There is a detailed explanation of the memory erasure procedure and also speculation of what it did exactly. They didn’t seem to be sure how much Bucky actually retained, some theorized everything disappeared, others suggested it was the connections that disappeared, thus taking the actual memories out of reach. Steve of course knows that the latter is probably closer to truth since something was left, he had seen the recollection and the fact that he is alive is proof enough.

He still remembers metal glinting in the water and something grabbing his uniform before he lost consciousness.

He’s read about how Bucky tended to grow more unstable the longer they kept him awake after a mindwipe, and they didn’t fully understand it but to Steve it’s obvious that Bucky was retaining some memories. There are bits of the recorded conversations where he recognizes a particular memory, and they always leave him feeling helpless anger. His friend was there, and he had fought against his captivity and mindwipes every step of the way, with everything he had. It is clear as day to Steve. He also recognizes that this assessment of his is probably resting on a lot of hope, it isn’t as clear to others, not when he still has (faint and healing but still there) scars from bullet wounds he’d received on board the Insight helicarrier.

He spoke about it with Bruce, who theorized that the version of serum that Bucky had was strong enough to let his brain heal while he was awake and not frozen, and it gave some hope to Steve. The fact that there had been so many mindwipes, and the process was so crude, indeed it couldn’t be used on anyone without an accelerated healing factor, rather lessened his hopes. Bruce wasn’t hopeful that it all could be healed, and even if it could, there was still the psychological trauma of what had happened, and Sam wasn’t very hopeful on that. And then there was Natasha, who was intimately familiar with the methods of making a human into a weapon, and she had added on Steve’s worries.

And yet, all of it is something he acknowledges and none of it matters. He knows already that he won’t get his friend back as he had been, that had become an impossibility the moment Bucky fell off the train. He knows it well, certainly better than his friends think he does. He knows that if he ever manages to find Bucky, he’ll find someone he doesn’t fully know anymore. It’s okay though, he’ll take what he can get, and accept any hardship if he’s able to make it even a fraction easier for Bucky. He knows his friends think he’s expecting a miracle, but they are wrong. He already received one, as beautiful and terrible as they can be.

The files tell him what Bucky has endured, but they offer very little insight on how to find him now that he’s out of HYDRA’s influence. They make it clear that he has sufficient skill to disappear, which he has done, but there’s nothing on his mindset, because they hadn’t considered it. They hadn’t needed to. Hence it’s up to Steve (and Sam and sometimes Natasha) to come up with a way to find him.

For months after he was released from hospital they tracked down leads, but they never got very close. At the same time it had been obvious that HYDRA was still a problem, but no one seemed to know whose responsibility it was, so the Avengers had decided it was theirs. For months Steve lived in the tower dividing his time between trying to find Bucky and taking down HYDRA with the team until Ultron happened. After that, everyone had taken time to reasses the situation, and the New Avengers facility had been built and the new team assembled. Steve had also decided he needed to take a new approach to finding Bucky, because what they had been doing hadn’t really worked.

It is risky strategy, he knows this, and counterintuitive at that, because he wants to chase after Bucky and now he is doing precisely the opposite. He stopped, found a place to live and came up with a routine, as much as one could with a job like his. He had started to think that maybe when they were after him, Bucky felt compelled to stay away, maybe he wasn’t ready yet for a contact and thus them chasing him made it worse, put pressure on him. That’s why Steve has done the best he can to take the pressure away while making himself available and easy to reach. Here he is, Bucky is free to come to him whenever he is ready.

Often it’s difficult to trust that Bucky will, and maybe after a while if it doesn’t happen Steve will have to come up with something else (because one thing he can’t accept is to let Bucky disappear completely, and he knows it is probably selfish, but it’s also the truth). However, from the little leads they found, there was one thing that was always there, and it was signs of him. Books, articles, places. This, in addition to the fact that Bucky had saved him from drowning, makes him feel confident that at some point Bucky will make contact. He just has to be patient (he was never very good at it).

Remembering all of this, Steve settles in to dig more information from the files.

 

* * *

 

He’s got no trouble locating Steve Rogers. Actually, ever since he left Rogers on the riverbank, unconscious but breathing and, factoring in his enhanced healing, not in danger to his life, he’d been more or less aware of his location. He had lain low, gotten rid of his clothes and weapons and found new ones, disabled the tracker in his arm. He’d known about it because his handlers didn’t care about his knowing. He was never supposed to leave, never supposed to be in a state of mind where he would want to leave. Or want anything, really. He understands that now.

And then he’d stood face to face with Steve Rogers, who’d abandoned his battle stance the moment he saw his face. Somehow this was completely unexpected and he had stopped too, not understanding why this man who just moment ago hadn’t shown any hesitation in trying to take him down now just stood there. And then Rogers had said “Bucky?” like he couldn’t believe his eyes. It had been that name, but more so the voice that had brought up the flood of memories, and somehow they had arranged themselves so that they weren’t the random pictures that he was used to, but something more coherent.

It had taken him a while, and he couldn’t be sure of whether what he remembered was true. There were bits and pieces from a life he didn’t remember, but there was always the face of Steve Rogers, the shape of whom changed from big to small to big again, from one fragment of life to another, always that familiar voice. And it had felt so much more real than anything in the room around him, the technicians with their tools, the soldiers and their guns.

Then there was Pierce, and suddenly his voice had been wrong, suddenly it had lost its hold over him. It hadn’t mattered anymore, now he knew something more certainly than he remembered knowing anything. He’d stood there, across from this man, and he’d _known_ him, known him like he’d never known anyone.

They had taken it away from him, and left in him a fear of knowing, but it hadn’t been enough.

He’d gone underground, relying on all the skills he had of survival and disappearing. He’d reminded himself to drink, to eat, to stay functional. It had taken some experimenting, because not all the food there was available stayed down. He’d known there were people after him, first from HYDRA, who he let get close, one after another. It wasn’t difficult killing them. Later there was Rogers and the man who’d worn wings on the helicarrier. Them he never let get close.

He had kept an eye on Rogers after he’d been released from the hospital, while also looking for all the information he could find. He knew Rogers was the key to whatever he was looking for, he wasn’t even sure what it was. Just that the man kept popping up in his head.

He’d happened near Smithsonian by accident, and even though he knew it probably wasn’t smart, he’d gone in to see the Captain America exhibit. There were a lot of people, more than he was really comfortable with, but at least it had been easy to blend in. There had been a lot of information of Steve Rogers, even pictures of him before he became Captain America, the way he was in some of the fragments of his memories. And there was a picture of a man with his face, except clean shaven and with neatly combed hair. James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. He had taken the name apart in his head, and it didn’t really feel like anything, not like it belonged to him. Didn’t feel like it didn’t belong to him either. It was something.

And there was the man standing next to Rogers, a few seconds of silent video looping. They were both laughing, _happy_ , he recognized the emotion even if he didn’t really know what it meant. It also was something.

After the visit he’d read about Steve Rogers, about James Barnes. He’d tried to piece their lives together, to match it into pictures in his head. It didn’t really match, it was always somehow off. It was even trickier trying to figure out what had happened to him after James Barnes fell from the train. There were records on the Internet, but they were fragmented and later deleted from the source, so that only copies of bits and pieces remained. It didn’t tell him very much.

He didn’t need records to figure out what all the blood and flames and bullets meant.

Rogers had relocated to New York, to Stark tower. There were others there as well, and they were sometimes in the news, sometimes he knew they’d been away to track down HYDRA and there wasn’t even a peep on the internet. He’d spent some time in the city, sometimes he left, but he never went far, and never for a long time. It was like there was a magnet that kept pulling him back, again and again.

Rogers had disappeared for a while, and there had been unsettling news about robots and his right hand had twitched where it gripped his rifle. There was a need to do something and he didn’t quite know what. And then there was a city lifted to the sky and falling back down again, and the Avengers were both heroes and villains.

The Avengers tower had gone quiet after that, but it didn’t take him long to find their new facility. It wasn’t like they were trying to hide, after all. Rogers had moved into a quiet building, without many neighbors and no security to speak of. In Stark tower, even though he’d known that Rogers lived there, he hadn’t really been accessible. But now, here in Brooklyn, he suddenly was.

He’d of course known when Rogers moved, and had even gone to see the place, but otherwise he’d kept his distance. Until now, that is. Now he’s been watching the building for a bit more than two weeks, and has become pretty familiar with the routine of its residents and businesses. He’s even been in the building in the middle of the night, and it had been easy, because there was no general security system. He’d stood in the dark hallway and laid his palm on Steve Rogers’ door, and nothing had happened. He didn’t feel vibrations from electronics, nor could he find cameras watching the hallway.

From what he had pieced together from his reading and fragmented memories, Rogers had never been one to worry much over personal safety, but this seemed too careless even for him. A quiet neighborhood, no security, not many neighbors, definitely no neighbors who had any fighting experience, no presence of the other Avengers (besides that one visit from Black Widow on the first Tuesday, but she didn’t seem too concerned either, which certainly felt wrong). Captain America had enemies and this seemed almost like inviting them for a tea.

Most of all he’d watched Steve Rogers. In here he didn’t seem that different from all the other people; the only thing out of ordinary was his shield that he took with him to and from the Avengers headquarters, and even that was covered, so to most people it probably looked like a weirdly shaped backpack. Rogers kept regular hours, went running in the mornings, did grocery shopping at the nearby store and the market, talked to the business owners at the streetlevel, helped a neighbor (a mother with a little girl) carry bags in from her car. On his days off he seemed to read a lot, either books or something on his computer. Something about it all seemed a little off, but there wasn’t anything that indicated threat or that it was just an act. It was wrong in a different way.

The cat Rogers kept feeding on his balcony seemed a bit skittish, but it didn’t look like Rogers minded.

On the second week Rogers left on Monday morning as usual, but didn’t come back, and it wasn’t much later that the news of Avengers fighting rogue robots again surfaced. He’d followed the coverage, watched every bit of footage there was from the other side of the country, and there was a cold unease at the bottom of his spine for the whole three days. The Avengers team was a mix of new and old, but they all seemed capable, and he breathed a little easier when he saw the blue form of Rogers shadowed by a man with wings. There was more red in them now, and they seemed more versatile than the ones he had destroyed on the helicarrier.

Still, he’d only settled on Friday night when he saw Rogers come back, seemingly uninjured.

On that Saturday had been the first and only time Rogers had seemed to sense his presence. He’d come out to go running, and instead of taking off like he usually did he’d turned around so fast he’d had to duck down on the roof. He’d startled a flock of birds while doing so, but Rogers didn’t seem too curious, and after a moment the sound of his steps headed away.

***

The night between Sunday and Monday is cool, the first of its kind, reminding that summer is coming to an end. It’s not what’s keeping him awake though. He doesn’t sleep that much, and he wakes to the smallest noise that’s not the usual background noise of the city, but he usually at least tries to sleep while Rogers does. Not tonight though. It’s two in the morning and Rogers has been sleeping only for an hour, as he went to sleep much later than he usually does. Sunday had been normal until around 7 pm when Rogers had pushed the computer off his lap, and started pacing to and fro, every line of his body tense. He couldn’t see what was on the screen, but he recognized the emotions. There was distress and anger, and unlike happiness, these were familiar to him even now. Rogers looked like he himself felt when faced with many of his memories.

As far as he knows, Captain America isn’t supposed to have dark dreams. Now he's starting to think that maybe Steve Rogers does.

Rogers wakes up at 4 am, after just three hours of sleep and considerably earlier than normal. He doesn’t take the usual morning run, and instead heads out on his motorcycle with his shield on his back. It’s not emergency, because he isn’t in hurry, but still perceivably upset. Something has happened to throw him out of his routine, something clearly not about the Avengers business. Something personal.

He waits for half an hour, considering. The change in Rogers’ demeanor has also changed something in him; now he feels ready to look for more, because it feels like there is something more, something he hasn’t seen in all the books written about Captain America. There’s no one around when he crosses the alley, no one to see him when he climbs up to Rogers’ balcony. It’s the third floor and there’s no fire escape, but the building is made of brick and easy to climb (the cat uses the vines clinging to the wall but they wouldn’t support his weight). It only takes him seconds. He crouches there for a while, listening, but there’s no one nearby. The door is locked but there’s no security system as expected, and it only takes a moment to let himself inside.

He knows most of the apartment from his surveillance, as Rogers isn’t too careful about his blinds and curtains, but it’s different actually being in there. There are things that can’t be perceived through the windows; the details, the smells, the feeling of a lived in place. For a while he just stands there, just inside the living room. It’s clear the apartment is empty, as he knew it would be. From the way the air moves he can tell all the windows are closed, the air conditioning off. There’s the low hum of electric appliances, and water starting to move in the pipes. At least one of Rogers’ neighbors is awake, then.

Slowly he begins to move about the apartment, taking in the details. The computer is on the table by the couch, but he doesn’t touch it. There is a blanket thrown on the back and several pillows, although he’s noticed Rogers seems to prefer the armchair. There is a book mostly underneath it, as if it had been left on the armrest and then fallen to the floor. There are more books on the shelves, and some of the titles he recognizes. The walls are bare but there are a few old photographs on one of the shelves. He turns abruptly away from his own face. He makes his way to the kitchen, looks into the fridge and cupboards, but doesn’t touch anything.

There are two bedrooms, one that has stayed dark all the time he has been watching, and the one that Rogers uses. The bed is neatly made and curtains drawn. Door to the closet is slightly ajar, and for a moment he just stares at the piles of clothes and spare blankets. There’s too many, he thinks, not quite sure where the thought came from.

On the bedside table is an old compass; he knows there used to be a picture of Agent Peggy Carter in it, although he’s not sure if he remembers this or if it’s because he saw it on one of the propaganda films. He’s watched all that still exist. He wonders if the picture survived the arctic waters and freezing temperatures for almost seventy years or if it was dissolved away. He doesn’t pick it up to see. Next to it is a tablet and underneath it a paper file, old and with cyrillic text on the cover. He carefully pulls it from underneath the tablet, and opens it, again to his own face. He leafs through it, but doesn’t read it. There are notes on little yellow squares, written in neat cursive that he knows is Rogers’ handwriting. They are comments and questions, theories. He doesn’t know whether they are more or less true than the actual files.

He replaces the file, leaving everything just as it was. After he leaves there’ll be no sign of anyone having been in the apartment, and Rogers can continue his carefree existence. He doesn’t know what he was looking for in the apartment, nor whether he found it.

Returning to the living room, he stops by the book on the floor, and picks it up without meaning to do so. It’s the only thing out of place in the whole apartment.

 

* * *

 

Steve arrives at the New Avengers facility much earlier than normal. The night shift is still at work, and there’s a light on in the lab, which means at least one of the scientists is already there. He makes a mental note to have someone look at the working hours again; there are certainly some people that spend way too much time at work, and while he finds dedication commendable, he’d also prefer the capable people they’ve hired to not burn out. He waves away the concerns of the people coming to greet him, after all it’s a reasonable conclusion to think something is wrong with him there so early. He thinks he doesn’t quite manage his normal reassuring smile when he heads to the gym.

There's no one else in yet, and the punching bags are such that they won't break no matter how hard he hits them, so that's something at least. He works steadily at it until the clock tells him the other members of his team should be arriving soon. He’s drenched in sweat, but not really tired and definitely not feeling better or less angry.

He’s unwrapping his hands when the door opens and Natasha and Sam come in, and it’s clear from their faces they expect something to be amiss. He definitely hadn’t managed to look reassuring to the night crew then. It might also be the fact he’d spent three hours with the punching bags, which is a lot even for him. Steve greets his teammates with a nod, but doesn’t say anything, just continues what he was doing. He doesn’t miss the way they glance at each other before they stop next to him. They both have mugs of coffee and Sam has another that he hands to him.

“Let’s take a walk outside,” Natasha just says, and so they do.

Sam and Natasha fall to walking on both sides of Steve, and for a moment they’re all quiet. Steve sips his coffee and notes it’s just to his liking, black and just a tiny bit sweet. He suddenly remembers he hasn’t eaten anything since last night. Finally Sam breaks the silence.

“So what happened?”

“Nothing happened.” Steve doesn’t even have to look at them to know they’re about to protest and raises his hand to continue. “Nothing happened now. Just decades ago.”

“Which means there’s really nothing you can do, and no obligation to feel responsible,” Natasha points out.

“That’s not really how it works, though. I know you know that.”

Nat’s smile is small and self deprecating; they both have regrets, and they both want to shoulder more than their own share of burden, and knowing this doesn’t do much to quell the instinct.

“Is it something you should talk to Nicole about?” Sam asks then.

“Probably.”

“It would be more constructive than trying to kill the punching bags. Which isn’t that good an instinct anyway.”

“I know, but I think it’s a bit too late for me on that front, really.”

Nicole is the psychiatrist that works with the team. When they had refined their operation after Ultron, Sam had suggested they probably needed someone professional to talk to, just to help them work through their various issues, and Steve had agreed, even if he had personally never felt comfortable talking to psychiatrists. Sam had suggested Nicole, who had helped him after he came home before she’d moved to New York. They’d asked if she was willing to take up a flock of superheroes and their various standard and non-standard issues, and it had turned out she was.

Nicole is extremely competent, and more importantly gets along with everyone. Steve had felt it was easy to talk to her, even about things that otherwise were hard to talk about. She had pointed out that punching bags really weren’t a good form of therapy, that they conditioned one to controlled aggression instead of letting anger go. She’d also smiled when Steve had told her that he’d probably been conditioned a long ago, and just told him that even old dogs learn new tricks.

“You should tell us what it is, though, because we know there’s only one thing that upsets you like this,” Nat continues.

Steve doesn’t answer, instead just fishes his phone out of pocket and finds the picture he’d saved there before handing it to her. It’s an old photo, but the man in it is clearly recognisable, and the way both Sam and Nat stop on their tracks clearly tells him they do. Alexander Pierce is probably in his early thirties in it looking like himself, but also uncannily like Steve.

Steve had been aware from the records that Pierce had been a lot more comfortable with Bucky than other people, not at all worried for his safety unlike everyone else. Bucky had been volatile, risky, but never with Pierce, which had helped him rise in the ranks of HYDRA. The only one who had perfect control over their most valuable asset. Steve had been wondering why that was and now he knows, or at least probably knows. It’s the only logical explanation, and he has to accept it, even if his mind wants to shy away from it.

Away from what it might mean.

And he wonders if they hadn't realised why it was that Pierce had all that control, if they had thought about it as a random thing without significance. Or maybe they had forgotten when they'd grown powerful, gotten arrogant. Otherwise he cannot fathom how they ever thought that it would be good idea to put Bucky against him. But they had, and it hadn’t worked for them.

He’d stopped and turned to wait his friends, and now they are both looking at him completely at loss for words. He knows that they probably want to tell him it’s not his fault, that it’s nothing he could control, and they also know he knows this, that they pretty much already said it. Nat looks at him the way she sometimes does, like she’s trying to work out what he’s going to do. It reminds him of the first time he’d caught her looking at him like that, in that hospital when they’d been on the run from SHIELD. She’d said then that she only acted like she knew everything, and it’s very apt, he thinks now. She’s been trained to recognize human emotions and predict their actions from them, and she’s so good at it that it’s easy to start thinking that she always knows. But she’s also a human, and moments like this, when it’s clear she doesn’t know what will happen, are a reminder of that.

“You know,” Steve says and starts back towards the building, “I woke up today and couldn’t decide if I was angry that he’s already dead, or thankful, because I’ll never get my hands on him.”

They head back inside in silence.

***

The day goes by slowly. Steve digs into battle reports and the training plans. He’d thought of ways to improve their training procedures, but he can’t quite focus enough to actually put anything concrete down, just makes notes for himself. He asks their HR-manager to look at their working hour statistics and tell anyone with unreasonable amount of overtime to go home. He’s actually pretty proud of the fact that (excluding the previous week) he’d kept pretty much normal hours himself. He has a couple of turkey sandwiches for lunch, and for most of the day he’s pretty much left alone.

A knock at the door catches his attention, and he realises he’d fallen into thoughts about anything but work. He waves Nicole in smiling a bit ruefully.

“I’m guessing Sam told you.”

“Just that there was something you probably needed to talk about and that the punching bags could use a rest.”

She grins at him, and Steve can’t help smiling for real this time.

“I guess you guys will never let that go. He’s right though, and I meant to come, just it didn’t quite feel like the right time.”

She looks at him for a moment, assessing, and nods. “You’re probably right, but you shouldn’t wait too long either. Did you have anything scheduled tomorrow afternoon? I’ll make an appointment there, send you an invite.”

“That should be fine, at least unless we get more crazy robots.”

***

Steve is home earlier than usual; at early afternoon he’d figured he wouldn’t get anything done anyway, and had told he’d leave and to call if something happened.

He steps in through the front door and immediately knows something is wrong; there’s an unusual current of air. He takes the shield out of its covering and goes to investigate. He isn’t particularly worried, because despite everything, he doesn’t sense danger, just weirdness. Better to not assume anything, he knows, and works methodically from room to room. Nothing seems to be out of place, and there’s no one in the apartment. From the living room door he can immediately tell the source of the air current; the door to balcony is a bit ajar. He makes sure there’s nothing in the bedrooms or the laundry room, and then he walks back to living room, and opens the door to balcony.

The first thing he sees is the cat that stares (disapprovingly, it seems to him) towards the far corner of the balcony. Bucky is sitting there, knees pulled close to the chest, wrapped into a large coat, shadowed by Steve’s makeshift balcony garden. There are no weapons in sight, and he looks at Steve steadily enough. In his hand (the right hand, flesh and blood underneath the leather glove) is the book Steve had finished on Saturday evening. He remembers leaving it in the armchair.

For a moment Steve can only stare. It’s been more than a year since he saw Bucky, and he looks more like he did then rather than the Bucky he remembers from the forties. There is something about his posture, the tightness, the sense of danger that is new. But there’s also something that he didn’t see the last time; now Bucky clearly recognizes him, and more than that seems to know at least somewhat what it means. And there’s absolutely none of the friendliness there always was before the train.

Steve doesn’t know what to do. He’d thought about this, about finding Bucky, about Bucky finding him, and now it has happened and he can’t remember what he’d decided would be a good course of action. He knows both Natasha and Sam have advised him about how to proceed, but he can’t remember a single thing they said.

Instead his attention is fixed on the book in Bucky’s hand, and he thinks of the man in the book, the man who wanted to build a garden, to bring beauty in the world and who went through so much heartache and still somehow managed to stay pure, to not become bitter. And he remembers stories of the Garden from Sunday school, how it was a place of beauty and innocence until people were tempted to sin (although he had always rebelled at the thought that simply wanting to know more was so terrible). Here in his tiny garden innocence has no place, because they both have lost it already, they already know too much.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, but it becomes obvious he has to do something, since Bucky seems content to just wait. Slowly, making it clear he’s not threatening Bucky in anyway, he slides the shield off his arm and sets it leaning to the wall just inside, and then he takes a step closer to Bucky and crouches down so that they are on the same level. Start from the basics, he remembers.

“Are you injured?” Headshake. “Are you hungry?” Another headshake, but hesitation. “Will you stay? You’re always welcome.” Again hesitation, and then, the best thing that’s happened to Steve in this century, a tiny nod.

“When was the last time you ate something?”

Finally, this question yields a verbal answer. “Yesterday evening.” Bucky’s voice is low, words forming slowly as if from lack of use. Steve isn’t particularly surprised.

“Then you definitely should eat something, hungry or not. Come on, Buck, let’s see what I have in the kitchen.”

Steve extends a hand to Bucky, who ignores it and gets up on his own, but clearly means to follow him inside. Steve can’t bring himself to feel disappointed at this.

The cat slips in before them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now I need to come up with a name for the cat...
> 
> The book is Steinbeck's _East of Eden_.
> 
> I added to the number of chapters, I worked a bit on my draft notes and this way I'll have more sensible breakpoints. Also the chapter lengths will be more manageable.


	3. we made houses out of cardboard boxes

He crosses the threshold from balcony to living room for the second time, this time after being invited. Rogers seems to be completely at ease with him, turning his back, leaving the shield by the door, and he can intellectually guess the reason; that because they were friends, Rogers trusts him. And yet, he doesn’t really understand that trust, when what happened on the helicarrier is still clear in his mind, superimposed over everything else he knows about their history.

Rogers pauses at the doorway, frowning a moment at the cat that has hopped onto the armchair Rogers likes to sit in, and then seems to notice he hasn’t moved farther than a step into the apartment.

“Bucky?” Rogers asks, still looking so trusting, and that really is what bothers him. The naked trust, the carefree stance as if nothing could hurt Rogers. He knows how untrue it is, how vulnerable this apartment really is. After all he’s done thorough recon on it.

“You never close your blinds or curtains.”

Rogers looks confused for a moment, like his mind is reeling to catch the thread of the conversation, and he elaborates, “It leaves you vulnerable, anyone can see you, to make an account of your habits.”

Rogers is smiling before he finishes, looking happy again, closest to the way he was in the news reel in the museum he’s seen so far. It’s not exactly the same; this smile isn’t quite as wide and carefree, he can’t properly articulate the difference he sees, only that it is there. Yet he can’t deny the knowledge that it is just as happy a smile, and he doesn’t know the reason for it either. Rogers steps back past him, his arm brushing lightly the sleeve of his coat, and no one has been that close to him voluntarily since before the fall, and it sends him reeling. Because of that it takes him a while to realize Rogers is closing the blinds while talking.

“I can close them if you think it’s a better idea. But did you consider that maybe I was hoping to be seen?”

It makes no sense, no sense at all to put oneself at risk like this, unless there’s some other motive, and his brain can only supply one. “Is this a trap?” he asks, half fearing the answer, because he truly doesn’t know what he would do if it turns out to be one.

Rogers looks at him, completely serious and sincere, definitely telling truth when he says, “No. It isn’t. You’re completely safe, to stay or go as you want.”

“Then what?”

The pause before the reply is long, too long, but Rogers still believes every word he says. “Maybe it’s a possibility.”

It’s another thing he doesn’t really understand, he can’t even guess what the possibility Rogers refers to is, but at the same time the words feel true to him, like they communicate the reason he’s here.

He follows Rogers to the kitchen, leaving the book he’s been holding on the coffee table.

***

He starts the night sleeping in the bed.

For the seventeen months he’s been on his own he’s mostly been sleeping rough, since he wanted to stay away from people as much as he could. Sometimes in the city he’s been suggested homeless shelters, but he’s never gone to them. His problems aren’t the sort that those people can help. Sometimes he’s slept in motels, especially when he spent time away from the city. It’s easier at the countryside to slip into a diner or to sleep at a motel. To talk to people. In the motels he sometimes slept in the bed, at least tried, but mostly ended up on the floor if he slept at all.

Here in the second bedroom the bed, even if a single, is big enough to comfortably fit him, and the mattress is sturdy and supports his back like nothing has so far. With the arm and all the other metal added to his physique, his weight doesn’t quite distribute normally (he has vague memories of having to learn all movements again because his balance changed completely), and no bed has really been comfortable until now. There are enough pillows and warm blankets as well.

Rogers gave him towels, a change of clothes and a toothbrush, showed him the bathroom and how to work the air conditioning. He closed his door and set the temperature a bit warmer than it had been. He heard Rogers move about the apartment, his phone buzzing every once in a while, probably text messages since he didn’t hear any talking. Late in the evening the cat meowed and Rogers let it out before there were sounds of shower and brushing teeth. Last thing Rogers did was to move around the apartment to put out the lights, and then there was silence. He fell asleep thinking that Rogers did too.

He wakes up at three in the morning and knows he’s not going to sleep again. He doesn’t need as much sleep as he’s noticed people normally do, and more than that, he’s out of the habit of sleeping. It had taken him a while to start remembering to take time to sleep, and it hadn’t been good because turns out he starts hallucinating after around 80 hours of being awake. Considering his mental state and lethal skills, that is something he’d prefer never to experience again.

Now though, he’s slept for four hours, which isn’t that far out of ordinary for a good night for him, but the fact he actually slept all the way through it definitely is. Usually he’d wake up at least five times if he was inside, more than twice that if he was sleeping outside. This is definitely out of ordinary, and he feels more rested than usual.

He pulls on a hoodie Rogers gave him, but leaves his shoes by the bed. He doesn’t remember the last time he moved anywhere without them, just so he’d be ready to leave quickly if needed. Most of the time he slept wearing them, but here is different. It feels safe enough (even if tiny part of his brain protests, but he steps down on it hard) and there’s also another reason; he doesn’t _want_ to leave.

The door doesn’t make a sound when he carefully opens it, and he slips into the dark hallway. From here he can tell that Rogers is asleep in his room. He goes to the door that is open enough that he can see most of the room from the threshold. Rogers is lying on one side of his bed, facing the door. His face is in the shadow and yet he can almost see the slight frown between his eyes. He remembers suddenly it only smoothed away occasionally, when Rogers was very happy.

It feels wrong somehow, to just stand there, and a tiny part of him wants to go in, but for the rest of him there might as well be a brick wall between them, and he doesn’t. He makes a round in the apartment, and most things haven’t changed since the afternoon. The dishes they used to eat have been put into the dishwasher, and there’s an empty glass on the counter. In the living room the book is still on the table where he left it, but there’s another one open on the couch. He looks out through every window, even the tiny one in the laundry room, although he already knows there’s no one outside he needs to worry about.

Finally he goes back to his room and settles into the corner of his bed. He doesn’t sleep nor does he really think about anything either. He just waits.

***

He snaps out of his reverie just before six when he hears Rogers moving in the hallway. The steps hesitate for a moment at his door and then move on (he can’t decide if he’s disappointed or relieved), and after a while he hears the front door. From the window he can see Rogers take off running, same as he has every morning except the previous one. He hasn’t asked what it was that upset Rogers, and it seems to be gone anyway.

He goes to put the coffee maker on so that it’ll be ready when Rogers comes back.

He’s retreated back to his room, but he can practically feel the hesitation about the coffee before there’s a clink of a mug on the countertop. He knows from his surveillance that Rogers drinks a lot of coffee, and it’s a detail that catches in his head because it’s new. He’s sure he remembers that Rogers never used to drink coffee, and that he always distributed his rations among the team. It makes him wonder if his memory on this is correct or not. It makes him wonder about a lot of memories. There are some he’d rather not be wrong about, and others he’d be terrified to find are indeed true. About some memories he can’t decide which reaction is more true.

Rogers takes a shower and moves about, probably doing things he normally does in the morning. Finally, at the time he’s seen Rogers head out, there’s a pause at the other side of the door, and from a telltale little clink he can tell he has the shield. He can’t help but tense a bit in his corner. The only thing that happens is that Rogers calls to him through the door.

“Bucky? I’m going to work, I’ll probably be back around six. There’s breakfast and the cat is inside again.”

Rogers hesitates for a moment, but leaves when he doesn’t answer and soon the front door closes. He waits until the sound of the motorcycle dies down and then emerges from the room. The cat is indeed back sleeping in the armchair, and it was good that Rogers mentioned it, otherwise there was a chance it would surprise him at some point. It’s certainly stealthy enough for that.

On the dining table is a note, written in the neat cursive he saw on the notes in his file. It’s held down by a phone. Next to it is a croissant that he finds has chocolate in it when he bites down. He pours a cup of coffee (he used to drink a lot of it before the fall, but hasn’t now) and only then reads the note.

_ Bucky, make yourself at home, there’s food in the fridge and cash in the drawer under the mirror. If you need to reach me, the number’s on the phone. _

There’s another little dot on the paper, as if Rogers rested the pen on paper before deciding not to write down whatever else was in his head. The phone isn’t locked, and there is indeed Rogers’ number, as well as others. He sets it on vibrate and leaves it on the table under the mirror. There’s cash in the drawer just as the note mentions, probably more than people usually keep in their houses.

He hesitates a moment, and then goes to get his file from Rogers’ room. The brick wall is entirely gone.

 

* * *

 

The first thing both Sam and Nat had told him via text (after he’d hung up without answering their calls and had told them to text instead) was to keep to his normal routine. Steve knows it’s good advice; it’ll help Bucky get adjusted living with him if he sticks to normality as much as he can (he’s really hoping there won’t be a supervillain attack in the near future). There’s also the fact that he knows they want him to come to work so that they can pile up their warnings and concerns over his head. Again. By this point there’ll probably be nothing new, and he’d rather skip it, but he knows they mean well, and they do have an insight he lacks (even if they sometimes forget that it’s true the other way around as well).

He’ll have to wait to have that discussion though, because as soon as he comes in, he gets cornered by Fury and Maria, and they discuss again the policies they should adopt as well as how to respectfully decline becoming part of the US military. Even if Steve started in the army, he knows that no single country should have a superhero team at their beck and call. It’s a delicate balancing act that he knows will probably never be done, but he’s going to do his best with it. These discussions are tough even on normal days, and now he’s having hard time concentrating at first, but after a while his work mode takes over and they have a productive morning.

Steve, Nat and Sam take their lunch to one of the conference rooms, and Steve is wryly amused since they’re both clearly trying to come up with something to say that he won’t immediately shoot down.

“Well, I’m here all in one piece, capable of discussing superhero politics after letting him sleep in the guestroom, so I guess the most pressing question of safety has been answered. Also, he made me coffee in the morning.” Steve adds the last one, because it had been such an unexpected thing and it works, Nat and Sam snap out of their apprehension.

“Tell us what exactly happened, you weren’t very forthcoming in the messages,” Nat starts.

“Would be easier just to talk,” Sam adds.

“Sure,” Steve agrees, “but I know I can hear through the walls, and he probably can as well, and I’m not going to talk about him with other people as if he wasn’t there. But what happened was really not much. I came home yesterday, noticed the balcony door was open and he was there, sitting in the corner.”

“How is he?” Sam asks.

“Looked like he’d been sleeping outside but not all the time. Looks thinner but it’s hard to say because he had a big coat on and didn’t want to take it off, even in this heat. Apparently after he split with HYDRA he’d found that he could only eat certain foods, and he’d stuck to those until yesterday. He never even tried other things after he first set up a routine.”

It’s hard to talk about this, because it’s such a clear indication of how far Bucky has changed from how he used to be (always eager to try new things, as opposed to Steve, who’d had to be more particular about food due to his poor health), and even more disheartening because it’s just so different from what human beings in general do. Steve knows very well HYDRA treated Bucky as if he was a thing, a machine that kept running if given adequate nourishment, not something that should have wants and preferences. It’s clear that these ideas are still rooted in Bucky. It’s just one thing, and Steve knows there are others that will be worse, but this is bad enough. All he can do is brace for everything else.

“Anyway, it seems he has recovered since then, because he could eat most of the things I had. Wouldn’t touch tomatoes for some reason. He didn’t talk much, not at all if I didn’t ask questions, and even those he often answered nonverbally or not at all. After we ate he disappeared into his room and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Was he aggressive?” Natasha’s next question doesn’t surprise Steve at all, he knew it would come and yet it’s difficult to answer, because he doesn’t fully know.

“Not towards me, at all. But there’s something underneath, I don’t know how to explain it, it’s not like back in the helicarrier, when he was definitely losing control, or on the causeway. It’s a sort of awareness, preparedness, but it’s targeted at everything else.”

“That could be just wishful thinking from you, projecting,” Natasha says, but she doesn’t seem quite sure. It’s certainly a remark Steve expects from her, but he knows he’s right about this, and she has also come to trust his judgement about people, even if he knows she thinks Bucky is a blind spot for him.

“I don’t think so. Like I said, he’s different from the helicarrier, and back then, I think I wanted it to be true more than now, because it was hard to accept the truth. Now it is different, but I’m not sure how far it extends.”

“I guess houseguests are out of question for a while now,” Sam remarks, and he seems a bit more relaxed. “Does he remember? Anything at all?”

“He certainly remembers something, or more like he has memories but he doesn’t truly _remember_ , there’s no context.”

“Lacking the emotional response.”

“Exactly. It’s like he knows who I am and our history, but he doesn’t truly know me.” It’s hard to say this, it had been a realisation he’d come to the night before, and even if he knows everything that’s been done to Bucky, even if he knew this was a likely thing even if Bucky came to him, it still stings. “But I guess it goes both ways now, I only know who he was, not who he is now.”

“Well, at least you have a chance to find out.” Natasha squeezes his hand, and it’s something he’s always found to be one of her most admirable qualities, that she seeks to reassure the people she cares about, and knows to do so exactly when they need it the most. Those are moments when she’s most herself, he thinks.

“I do, and I am grateful. But, you know, get one good thing that’s not perfect, it’s difficult to not want more, however wrong and stupid it is.”

“We know,” Sam reassures him. “What was that about coffee?”

“Like I said, I didn’t see him today, but I went running in the morning, and when I came back there was a pot ready. It’s pretty obvious he’s been watching me for a while.”

“How come?”

“Well, first of all it felt like someone was. And these days I always make coffee after running, but I didn’t used to drink any at all before when he knew me. He also wanted me to close my blinds, said it made me vulnerable if people could just see inside.”

“He’s right about that, though. But at least if someone decides to try to get a drop on you at home, they’ll have double the headache now.” Natasha sounds almost cheerful now.

For the rest of their meal they discuss the new training programs they’re trying to implement, and also possibility of new recruits. There are a few individuals they know about, but as they haven’t approached Avengers yet, they’re in no hurry to try and find them either as long as they don’t start harassing normal people.

***

Steve has the discussion with Nicole later that day, although it’s very different from what he’d expected it would be, since his world has turned around after they’d scheduled it. He’s still angry about Pierce, probably will be for a long time, but right now it’s moved to the back of his mind. He suspects it’ll come back at some point even worse, but right now he’s fine with how things are.

He’s told Nicole about Bucky before, and hence he doesn’t need to get on too many details about their history. She already knows what this means to him. She does help him sort out some of his confused feelings, and just talking with her is calming, which makes her so good at her job. She was one of the people who had listened him about his life from the start instead of just assuming things and then having to change their minds.

As often happens during these sessions he falls silent, just reflecting. This time he’s idly turning his tags in his hands. They are the old ones from the war, two tags in chain, identical except they aren’t. One bears his name, the other Bucky’s, just as they did for most of the war. No one found out back then. He sometimes wonders why no one ever asked him about it, why no one wanted an explanation, because clearly there are people in SHIELD that saw them, as they were returned to him with his compass after he’d settled a bit into present. Obviously Fury would know, and sometimes he suspects Natasha does too, because it is the kind of thing she’d find out, for all that she says she only acts like she knows everything. Neither one of them has ever talked about it with him, and Steve is grateful. He has never been sure how to explain it, that they mean exactly what they think they mean, and yet nothing like it at all. Not for the longest time. He still doesn’t know how he’d explain it, and hasn’t talked about it with Nicole either.

He doesn’t wear the tags anymore, but they are always with him.

“I think all you can do now is to wait and see, but I need to warn you,” Nicole says when it’s almost time for him to leave. “You need to understand he’s not really your friend that came back. You can’t expect that.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but it actually doesn’t matter. He is my friend, regardless of what has happened, and I know you’re saying I shouldn’t expect him to be the same person, and I don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

“I know you know that, you’re smart enough, but this is not just a change that happens to everyone over time, this is more than that, more drastic.”

Steve is silent for a moment, trying to find a way to make her understand that he indeed knows all this.

“Back when I got the serum, the first time I looked into the mirror, I didn’t recognize myself. But it was more than just how I looked, I know I was different on the inside too, it’s hard to explain, but I knew I wasn’t quite the same. Literally everything about me had changed. Then I found him in Austria, and he too had changed, and now we know it was more than just the experience, it was something like my serum. Regardless of it all we were still friends; it took a while to settle into it again, but there was never a doubt whether it would happen. It was just us, same as ever. And now he’s changed from back then, but so am I. I’m not the same man that went down in that plane. We just have to find each other again, and I have to believe we can.”

Steve goes home and finds the door to Bucky’s room closed and the file gone from his bedroom. He doesn’t see Bucky that day at all.

***

Technically they live together, but in a way they don’t.

Steve doesn’t see Bucky that much, and when Bucky is in his room it’s quiet enough that sometimes he thinks he’s alone in the apartment. Sometimes he is, and he only notices it since he catches Bucky coming in, through the door or, more often, the balcony. Steve treats it all as if it’s normal, going through the days, going to work, doing his chores, and soon enough it becomes his new normal. Bucky is there but he isn’t there with Steve. Not really.

He goes running every morning and without fail there is a pot of piping hot coffee waiting for him when he comes back. He cooks sometimes, sometimes brings food in and sometimes they even eat together, Bucky coming from his room when called or, even more rarely, is still in the living room when Steve gets home. It’s hard to gauge what all these different actions mean, except he can’t help but take it as a good thing that Bucky wants to spend time with him at all. He very firmly steps over the little voice that wants to ask what good is it coming to live with him if they mostly don’t interact. He knows it’s the irrational and selfish part of his brain.

He makes a point of finding things to eat purely because they are good, to help Bucky remember that it’s part of eating also to enjoy the food, not just getting sustenance. He’s not quite sure how successful this is, but it’s not like either one of them needs to worry about calories. Bucky is definitely close to if not actually underweight.

He knows Bucky reads books, everything that’s on his shelves really, and he starts bringing back new ones. Bucky used to love science fiction and he brings back those stories, mostly those that were published after the war, but sometimes he finds old ones as well. The books get read; they disappear into Bucky’s room for few days and then reappear, but not all of them. Steve wonders if it’s the books that affect Bucky that stay in his room, and if it’s a good or a bad thing. This again is something that is hard to tell.

There are so many things that are difficult to predict, and it’s exhausting. Steve feels like he’s walking on eggshells most of the time, never knowing when he might do something to break this fragile peace that they have. He knows it’s bound to break at some point and that it might even be a good thing. And it might not. At the same time, he knows he’s never been happier here in the future that feels less like a future now. He finally feels like it’s becoming his time.

The cat has definitely decided that sleeping on chairs and couches and pillows is preferable to sleeping outside, and Steve gets more supplies and now he has a cat, instead of him just feeding one. Their neighbor Mrs Ferreiro, or Elena as she had insisted being called, is a vet, and he had taken the cat for her to make sure everything was fine. Apparently the cat is healthy, and there was no microchip or any other sign of her previous owner, which means there likely won’t be anyone coming to claim her. While there he had answered Elena’s daughter Luisa’s questions about being an Avenger and a soldier. Elena had tried to get her to let go but Steve truly hadn’t minded. Luisa had also mentioned her father was a soldier, away on a tour.

He names the cat Hecate, and Wanda finds it funny, since Hecate is often associated with death and witches (and she is right in her guess that Hecate the cat is mostly black) but the reason Steve chose the name was that she’s also associated with crossroads, and it is a pretty big crossroad that they all are in this part of their life. There’s also the fact that she seems to be uncannily fascinated by the moon.

Bucky still doesn’t talk much, and Steve doesn’t really know how much he remembers. There are certainly some glimpses that indicate memory, but it’s not enough to go by. Sometimes Steve talks about their past, when something reminds him of some specific instance, but he hasn’t made it a habit, because somehow it doesn’t feel quite right, to impose all of his memories on Bucky. And Bucky never asks about the past; not even when he reads something to do with their history and looks at it like he doesn’t think it’s quite right (Steve could tell him that there’s a lot that isn’t accurate or is colored by misconception) or when he sometimes just looks at Steve like he’s trying to find something and quite can’t. Those are the moments when Steve most feels like he’s failing.

One day he picks up the book that Bucky had left on the coffee table that first day. It’s lain there forgotten ever since, neither one of them has touched it to read it or put it back on the shelf. Steve means to do it now, except he opens it and on the page there’s a line that had resonated when he first read it.

_ “And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine.” _

He feels like it somehow applies to the situation, even though they are not gods but mortal men, and even if he doesn’t know which one of them needs rebuilding. Probably both of them.

***

There is a day like any other, and Steve is moving dishes from the washer to cupboard, and maybe he’s more in his thoughts than he should be, because one of the glasses slips and shatters against the edge of the counter just as he’s grabbing it. He ends up with sizable shard lodged in his palm, and swears out loud, not really from pain but from all of it. How his life is the way that he can’t concentrate even on menial tasks. How he’s tired, exhausted really, mentally. And yet he wouldn’t change this for anything, because difficult as it is, this is the best the world has to offer for him, and he’ll never let go.

He closes his eyes, leans to the counter careful to not move his feet, because he really doesn’t need another piece of glass through his skin.

It is kind of pathetic to just stand there, bleeding and doing nothing, but for a moment he doesn’t have any energy. He vaguely means to get going in a moment, except before he can there’s a hand at his wrist, and it’s cold and metallic but still the touch is gentle.

Bucky just appeared there without a sound, as he usually does these days, and if it was anyone else Steve would have flinched and probably stepped on the glass strewn on the floor, but it seems that there is still something in him, after all this time, that recognizes Bucky and completely disregards the possibility of threat.

Bucky guides him away from the mess and sits him on one of the chairs by the dining room table. He’s also grabbed the first aid kit from the bathroom and proceeds to tending the wound, taking the glass out and gluing the wound shut. His hands are efficient and gentle, and it’s familiar, there are countless memories that Steve has that are much like this, but he pushes them all away, because this is now, the reality. Neither one of them speaks; Bucky is quiet as he tends to be, and Steve can’t quite find words to say in fear that they are the wrong ones. Because this is the first time Bucky has touched him since he came back, and it means everything.

_You are so much braver than me, you always were_ , Steve wants to say, but doesn’t because he’s fairly sure it wouldn’t be the right thing now. Instead, when Bucky finished bandaging his hand he just says, “Thank you,” trying to make it mean more than just two simple words. And maybe it does, because Bucky finally looks at him fully in the eyes, and nods.

After this Steve changes his tactics a little bit. He still keeps to his routine and gives Bucky his space, but he also starts giving more openings. He never fails to call Bucky for meal, even if he hasn’t been out of his room all day while Steve is there. He mentions going out, for a walk, to cafe, to the store and asks if Bucky wants to come. He gets Bucky running shoes and always asks if he wants to come with him for his morning run. And it might feel useless, since Bucky doesn’t go out with him, but there is a change. The days when he comes home and Bucky is in the living room start to happen maybe twice a week instead of just once, and they eat about half the meals together.

Most importantly everything feels more relaxed, even if Steve still knows that he is pretty much walking on the eggshells.

 

* * *

 

Names are funny, they can be true and yet not really mean anything. After he’d split from HYDRA he’d found out his name was James Barnes, that he used to be called Bucky, and he’d known it was true and yet it didn’t make it _his_ name. Similarly, he’d found out that Captain America had a name, Steven Grant Rogers, or Steve (or Stevie, sometimes his brain supplies). It hadn’t felt any more real, not familiar at all in his mouth when he tried it out. It wasn’t even familiar in his head. Thus he’d fallen into habit of calling him by the last name, like he was called in books and articles.

But now, actually living with the man, hearing him speak, it suddenly feels wrong. Rogers is his name, but it’s something that shouldn’t be used when talking to him or even thinking of him in his head. It’s something official, to be used with other people, or maybe if he wants to make a point, to aggravate. Now it means something more than just serving as an identifier. And so do other names, hence he’s changed things in his head. Steve. That one feels right, even if he hasn’t said it aloud.

And while his name hadn’t really meant that much when he saw it on page, or said it to himself, it is full of meaning when Steve calls him Bucky. Always that, or sometimes the shorter Buck, and it feels right in his head, that’s how Steve should call him. He thinks it’s not something he’d want other people calling him, but that’ll come later, maybe. In here it’s all that matters, here he’s Bucky, because Steve calls him that, and he’s surprisingly at peace with that thought.

***

Here’s the thing: if he really needs to, he actually can break through a brick wall.

It’s another night, and while he did sleep, it was plagued by dreams, and he doesn’t really feel that rested. Staying in the room during the night time is harder, he feels like moving, but he never goes out, because of the way he feels at night. He thinks he might just go and not come back, and he doesn’t want to leave. So he stays inside, close enough to his anchor, and paces silently to and fro.

After a while he pauses at Steve’s door, because it’s obvious Steve’s not sleeping peacefully like he usually does. The signs of nightmare are the same as ever, he remembers how the young boy looked, in the middle of his fever dreams. He hesitates a moment and then steps over the threshold.

Steve wakes up the second he touches him, sucking in breath like he couldn’t before and for a moment clings to Bucky’s wrist before he seems to realize where he is and then lets go. Part of Bucky is slightly disappointed by that. Then Steve pushes the covers away (“I think I’m done sleeping for now”) and goes to pick up a shirt and sweatpants from a chair. Bucky thinks there is something, a picture, on Steve’s skin that covers his ribs on the left side, but it’s too dark to see even with his enhanced eyesight and then it’s covered.

Steve makes coffee, not that it would help them to stay awake, but it’s warm and familiar. They settle in the living room, Bucky on the couch, Steve in his chair and he can barely sit down before Hecate appears from nowhere and jumps in his lap. Steve scratches her belly absentmindedly and maybe it’s the night time, or that they haven’t put lights on so that shadows make everything softer, but Bucky feels curious like he hasn’t so far. Or at least now he finally feels like asking Steve would be a good way to satisfy his curiosity.

“What do you dream of?”

“Varies. Sometimes it’s everything terrible that happened, or even didn’t happen but could have, or something I think did happen. And sometimes I dream that nothing terrible happened and that everything is fine and happy. Those are the worst dreams.”

“And tonight?”

“Drowning.”

“Because you remember?”

“No.” Steve smiles a bit ruefully. “I don’t actually remember. it’s just something my subconsciousness decides to throw at me anyway. The first time I remember seeing the ice come closer and then it just stops. I guess my brain decided I didn’t need that memory. And the second time it was just the water enveloping me and the last thing I remember is seeing your hand reaching for me. But that’s not what I dream about.”

Bucky sometimes dreams of drowning, and it’s always violent, his lungs burning, people holding him down. He hopes Steve’s dreams are not like that.

It’s starting to get a little bit lighter outside, the sky isn’t yellowish black anymore, but light grey, and the half drunk coffee in his cup is cold. He goes to put his cup away and coming back the photos on the shelf catch his eye. He can’t really see the details, but he’s looked at them enough to remember every detail.

“He doesn’t resemble me very much.”

“Hm?”

“In the photos. It’s my face but neither one of them is like me. Not the one from war, nor the one from before. And they are different from each other too. I’m not him you know.”

It’s something he feels he must tell Steve, even if saying the words is hard, because what if it’s true? What if Steve suddenly realises it’s true and then wants nothing to do with him, because his friend is gone. But Steve just looks at him, serious.

“And what about me in the pictures? I know I don’t look the same as I did then.”

“But you’re still you.” Bucky doesn’t quite understand where Steve is aiming at with this.

“And there you go. It’s true you’ve changed, and so have I. But it never mattered before, because it was still us. And it still doesn’t matter to me. You will have to decide whether it matters to you.” Steve pauses for a moment and continues, “I have changed too you know, I went into the ice and wasn’t quite the same when I came out. And maybe even if you remember all of me, there are still things you won’t recognize, because they are new. Some things I lost, others I gained, and I had to figure all over again who I am now. I guess I’m still doing that.”

Steve looks at him and smiles, and it’s a relief in a way to know that maybe the memories he’s pieced together aren’t wrong even if they aren’t quite accurate anymore. But it also leaves questions. What kind of things have changed about Steve?

They are quiet for a while again, until Hecate jumps off Steve’s lap and asks to be let out. She mostly just stays in the balcony these days, but she doesn’t stay inside all the time, even if technically people should keep their pets in. Steve opens the door for her and then asks, “Come run with me?”

There really isn’t a reason not to, so he goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere Peggy senses Steve being all overdramatic quoting East of Eden at himself and rolls her eyes.
> 
> Also Steve is very irresponsible cat owner, don't do like he does.
> 
> What happened with the tags (and other things from the war, in Bucky's perspective) you can find in the prequel [i would not think to touch the sky](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4588425). I have at least a couple more prequels cooking in my head as well.


	4. a tenderness

Bucky is pretty sure Hecate doesn’t like him. She tolerates him, and certainly accepts (even demands) food from him, but outside of that she mostly ignores him or glares at him if he is at the balcony when she wants to sit outside. Steve, on the other hand, she seems to love. He usually can’t sit down without her settling on his lap or at the back of his chair, and she even occasionally sleeps in his bed, although she’s very much nocturnal. She definitely doesn’t approve of the times Bucky has difficulty sleeping and walks around the apartment.

It’s the first night Steve is not home since Bucky came to stay with him.

It’s not an emergency; the Avengers have only had minor things to do recently, nothing that would take more than hours. Logically he knows it won’t last, but for now it has. Steve has gone to D.C., took off on his bike late afternoon and most likely has already arrived. He only had minimal amount of things with him, as he’ll be back on Sunday night. The shield was on his back as usual, but it’s not a work trip, it’s about as personal as it can get for Steve outside his home; he’s gone to visit Peggy Carter.

Bucky is mildly unsettled (for him anyway, but any kind of unsettlement can spiral out of control too easily) by this trip, and more than mildly annoyed for the feeling. It isn’t about safety or being alone, although it does feel odd knowing Steve isn’t coming home for the night. It is the fact that the thought of Carter scrapes the inside of his brain, for a reason he hasn’t quite sorted out. He knows about her from the public records and from the films and documents she was interviewed for, but his personal memories of her are all withing the big tangle of war after Austria. There’s something related to her, something unsettling in his tangled memories, but those are hard to sort out, it’s hard to choose the meaningful ones. And there is the unease, a sense of something complicated which he’s been shying away from before. He doesn’t particularly feel like touching it now either.

Trying not to think about it doesn’t really lessen his agitation, and Steve had noticed it while he was getting ready to leave, and then the way he’d looked at Bucky, with the slight frown that seems almost habitual now, had only aggravated him more. Bucky had been shorter than usual when he’d told Steve he’d be fine, and in the end he’d basically told Steve to go. And Steve had gone, still frowning.

It’s a weird feeling, being alone again for more than a day. On one hand it makes it easier for him, since he doesn’t need to think if he’s behaving like he should, like _Bucky_ would (he thinks he fails at that more often than he knows, more often than Steve shows). On the other hand, slipping into the spiral is easy, easier when he’s alone.

Hecate bumps her head at his ankle and then scampers towards kitchen, and he realises he must have just stood there for who knows how long. It’s dark and already quieting, must be past midnight. He fills Hecate’s food bowl and replaces her water, then looks at the fridge but can’t muster desire to eat. Instead he cleans the cat box because it’s something to do, something that doesn’t require thinking.

Bucky doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want any of the thoughts that grind like sandpaper inside his skull, and those are the only ones he has today. He wants to go out and run, climb onto the rooftops and run more, go as far as his legs take him and then continue, until he has no energy to think about anything. He doesn’t, because he thinks if he starts to run he’ll never come back, and the only thing he sees that way is black oblivion, and it would be worse. Easier, but worse.

He ends up sitting in the hall, back to the wall across from Steve’s room. For a while he just sits in the darkness, resting his arms on his knees. What ends up on the top of his mind is the frown on Steve’s face before he left. He remembers seeing a lot of that frown, definitely has seen a lot of it since he came to stay with Steve (even if Steve mostly tries to hide it), but he thinks there is a change in it, although it’s not exactly new change. Before the war, when Steve’s frown was directed at Bucky, it was usually angry or frustrated. In Austria when Steve pulled him up from that table (he knows it happened, and furthermore, he’s fairly sure he remembers how, but there’s a huge chasm of other memories right next to it that he doesn’t want to touch) there was a new flavor to that frown and it was worry. He’d seen the worry before of course, it was the only expression Steve had from his mother getting really sick until her death, but it had never been directed at Bucky before. He didn’t like it then, and he doesn’t much like how it makes him feel now. He’s supposed to be able to take care of himself, Steve is not supposed to be worried over him. It’s just too late for that.

He’s not sure if he sleeps, and he certainly doesn’t go to bed. He gets up on his feet when Hecate meows from the living room because she wants to go on the balcony. By then the sun is well above the rooftops.

 

* * *

 

Saturday is hard in a way that makes Steve feel kind of guilty for thinking so. Because Peggy is lucid, holds up conversation like she used to and more than that, she’s happy. She also thinks it’s 1944.

Alzheimer’s is a difficult disease for anyone close to the patient, having to watch the slow descent. It grates Steve to see it happen, when the comparison of how Peggy used to be is still clear in his mind. It is also an incredibly unfair disease, because of the ebb and flow; how sometimes Peggy is in the present, remembering things, only to forget he ever came back the next moment. She’s not strong enough to walk anymore, and maybe it’s a blessing, considering the paranoia and distrust that comes with the disease. Those episodes tend to be tough, since they couple with the natural distrust originating from having run the premier intelligence agency of the world for decades, but at least even in the middle of an episode, when she doesn’t remember who they are, Peggy still trusts him, her children and grandchildren.

However hard it is from the outside, Steve is also sort of grateful, since the way the illness works means that Peggy herself doesn’t realise how sick she is, doesn’t realise that the only way is down. Steve thinks in a detached way (which sometimes is the only thing that helps him power through) that it’s actually kind of amazing how her brain compensates for or ignores the facts that don’t sit with the period she remembers; the modern medical equipment, the photos of her family, even the fact that she can’t stand.

Steve does what he always does, even if it tears at his heart; he puts up his happy face and talks about things with Peggy, memories about his team, operations and just general state of the world.

He stays for most of the day and afterwards takes a run from his hotel. He goes to the Mall, runs laps there, and it’s only at the place where he overtook Sam that first time that he remembers this is the first time he’s back at his regular running place. For a moment he contemplates on how much his world, and everyone’s world, has changed since then. He believes it is for the better, although there are days it is a bit hard to remember. He’s been back to the city before of course, but on the previous occasions he ran elsewhere or not at all. Since he moved to New York he hasn’t been able to visit Peggy as regularly as he did when he lived in D.C., but he made a point of coming over for a weekend at least once a month. Now it has been more than two since the last time he came, little less than that since Bucky appeared, and leaving (anywhere, even to work) became hard, but also something he needs to do. It wouldn’t be good for either of them to stay cooped up in the apartment, and he’s not going to give up everything else for Bucky (who would probably be the angriest if he even suggested such a thing).

Nevertheless, actually leaving had been harder than expected this time, since there was clearly something bothering Bucky, and Steve still isn’t sure if leaving him alone like that is a good idea. Not because he’s worried Bucky might be a danger to others, Steve knows he’s not, but how it might affect Bucky himself. It’s the worrying part of his brain. The other part points out that it might not be a good idea to stay either, and as much as he wants to, he can’t actually shield Bucky from everything, and he should also respect the fact that Bucky had outright told him to not stay (it’s the first time he requested _anything_ since coming back).

There’s a tiny part of Steve that fears Bucky will not be there when he comes back. He pushes that thought away very quickly.

***

After their food arrives Sharon fixes him with that look of hers that usually makes him think she actually does look like her great aunt (mostly he doesn’t really see the resemblance). It’s assessing, like she’s peeling back all the layers covering his soul. It doesn’t bother him anymore like it used to right after he’d found out who she was.

“You look happier. Actually more than I’ve ever seen you, and I doubt that’s due to change of scenery.”

They have fallen into an easy friendship by now, although it had taken a while after the whole mess of Insight. It had rankled Steve to have been lied to, and even more since she’s actually someone that’s part of Peggy’s family, which means it wasn’t just her and SHIELD that lied, but a sizable amount of people he regularly associated with outside of work as well. It had put him on the defence again for a while; everything falling apart around him tended to do that, and he’s very glad he met Sam before all of it, or they might not be as good friends as they are.

Steve understands the need for lying in the field of work that Sharon does, and it probably is less weird for her, considering what Peggy did for all her life basically. For Steve it still feels like a big sacrifice, to have your family so ingrained to never even mentioning you to other people that Peggy doesn’t do it even now that her memory is slipping and she most often thinks her grandchildren’s generation are just that, children still if they exist at all. When she remembers them she talks about all of them, her own and her sister’s descendants, except for Sharon. Peggy is extremely proud of her, Steve has found out now that he knows to ask.

It’s not just Sharon that Steve was angry at, it was Fury too, who knowing who she was still put her on the special duty to watch over Steve. He isn’t particularly surprised, because while Fury cares about people, it’s (some notable exceptions withstanding) more as a group, for their safety and not so much their personal lives, especially if you’ve signed up to work for him. And truth is, there weren’t that many agents who could have been assigned to protect Steve without it being completely ridiculous. If there was something he couldn’t handle, most agents wouldn’t make a significant difference except for calling back up. And out of those few candidates Steve already was familiar with two when he moved and started working for SHIELD.

Sharon is incredibly capable, and more than that, she’s all around capable unlike most agents, who tend to have one specialty and barely adequate skills in other aspects. When they’d gotten more comfortable with each other, Sharon had mentioned (a few times actually) that if one wanted to progress in the ranks fast and was a woman, one had to be good at everything, more so than men. Apparently it’s more pronounced in her new job with CIA than SHIELD, although he gets the feeling she doesn’t think SHIELD was super exemplary on that front either.

Point is, it had taken a while, but in the end Steve had decided he actually likes her despite the deception; he respects her skills and he doesn’t have too many friends anyway. It also helped that she gave him a crash course on all the newest spying and bugging techniques (which hadn’t really been a focus on Steve’s SHIELD training, him working mostly on the operational side of things) by way of apology.

After he’d gotten to know the real Sharon, it was a relief that she wasn’t too different from Kate-the-nurse, although less harmless appearing certainly. She doesn’t really resemble her great aunt that much if one knows them both better than on a surface level. There are some aspects that are similar, certainly the way they are driven, always going for a goal, and not particularly keen on tolerating anyone’s nonsense (although what they consider nonsense varies). Sharon is also more pragmatic, less idealistic, looking at how the world works and trying to make her way in it rather than dreaming of majorly changing it. Sometimes Steve wonders how much that is due to difference in character and how much comes from the world and time she was born into.

A lot of people might point out to Steve that it would be unreasonable to trust Sharon, considering her job and the fact that she lied to him to begin with and yet. He does trust her now, even with the most important things in his life, and doesn’t see any reason to dodge her remark now, especially since Sharon already knows what he’s been up to since Insight.

“He came back. He’s been staying with me for a couple of months now.”

“Ah. Well, that explains the longer time between your visits here.”

“Yeah, it felt like it wasn’t the time.”

“But now you’re fine leaving him alone.”

Steve isn’t quite sure if Sharon thinks he’s doing the right thing, it’s certainly not an idle statement.

“It’s not like I’ve been keeping him anyway, I’ve been going to work and he can and often does get out and in through every window and door. I’m not worried for anyone else, he’s not out of control or dangerous unless provoked. But it’s not like he’s settled in or recovered either.”

“There are plenty of HYDRA records that show he was unstable while under their control,” Sharon points out, and of course she’s looked at those.

“True, but I’d say conducting medical experimentations, brainwashing and everything else they did count as provoking.”

“Point,” she concedes.

“Also he’s not on any of the drugs they pumped him full of either,” Steve continues. “I know from the outside it’s maybe not too convincing when I say he’s not a danger, because all of you guys think I’m giving him leeway because he’s my friend.” Sharon gives him a pointed look and he rises his hand. “Yeah I know, it’s even true, but I’m not blind in this, because if I was I’d actually be doing him disservice. I know he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and I know he won’t. He’s making sure of it.”

“You can’t blame us for being sceptical since you have scars from the bullets he put through you.”

“Actually those are fading quite nicely. But I know what you mean. And I know it’s safe. Others he keeps safe by not going close if he’s not feeling right and me, well, apparently it’s like there was a switch in his head. He hasn’t really talked much about it, or about anything else for that matter, but he told me it happened like that, back on the helicarrier. First there was a mission and having to complete it despite any and all cost and then suddenly it was the last thing he could have done. He saved my life instead, dragged me from the river.”

“Switches can work to both directions, though.”

“I know you’re the ultimate realist, but even you don’t believe that.”

She smiles at that. “I hope you’re right.”

“I know I am,” Steve says and then changes the topic, because he also really wants to know how she’s doing, and they are both kind of bad at long distance friendship. “How’s CIA treating you these days?”

“It’s frustrating and interesting at the same time. They’re finally giving me assignments that are worthwhile and not playing at being an agent. Oh, and I did end up finally decking that guy I told you about last time.”

“The one with the inflated ego?”

“That’s him. Deserved it too. He complained to our supervisor, who agreed with me on the part of him deserving it, and just told him that if he can’t even handle being punched maybe they should re-evaluate his field capability. Shut him up really fast.”

Sharon grins and Steve laughs. “Well, if it gets too frustrating you can always come work with us.”

“Might be worthwhile just to see the faces of some of my colleagues. The Avengers aren’t really the most popular group among them.”

“Yeah, that goes around.”

“I think a big part of it is professional envy, since you guys seem to pick up a lot of activity before us. But thanks for the offer, I’ll pass for now. I’m going to find out all the state secrets first.”

“You’re terrible.”

“I only do my very best. Speaking of colleagues, how’s your new team coming around?”

For the rest of the meal they talk about their friends and colleagues; it’s gossip really, but it’s light and time flies. There’s even a kind of flirty tone to it occasionally, and Steve thinks it’s rather ironic how easy it is now that there is no pressure, no expectations from either one of them. After becoming friends for real they had figured out pretty quickly that they really wouldn’t be compatible in any other kind of relationship besides friendship. They are too similar in some ways, including their almost obsessive dedication to their jobs (even if it’s a lot less for Steve these days), and too different in other ways. There hadn’t really been any sting to the realisation, since at that point Steve was already beyond a point of looking for a relationship. He is just happy about their friendship.

***

On Sunday Peggy is sleeping when he comes in, but she’s sitting in her chair instead of bed, which is always a good sign, and Steve settles into another armchair and waits. She looks more frail than he remembers; there is almost a translucent quality about her now. She’s slipping away, and every moment is precious.

He knows most people think he visits her because of duty, a responsibility instead of any lingering feeling, since she moved on after him. But truth is he still loves her, although in a different way from what he used to. He’d say that in a way it is less, and he wouldn’t say he’s _in love with_ her anymore (Natasha had laughed at him when he’d tried to explain the difference at the tail end of a long movie night, but he thinks she did understand in a way at least). On the other hand, in a way he also loves her more now, because it has solidified, it doesn’t feel like some fragile thing of spun glass that he has to handle with caution. It’s something as strong and indestructible as vibranium.

Back during the war, he had fallen in love with her, and never really stopped falling. He’d never fully found his footing with it back then. And it had been hard at first, seeing her after all that time, so different and yet the same, because he hadn’t known where they stood, neither one of them really had. Some things were different, and some things never changed. They had found the common ground fairly soon though, a place for him in her life, a place for her in his heart, and maybe those places weren’t the ones they had thought they’d occupy, but they do feel right.

Steve is proud of her, more than he could really describe when he’d heard about everything Peggy had achieved with SHIELD. He hadn’t really been surprised though, as many seemed to think he would be. He’d always known what she was capable of. And he’s also proud of how she’d built her life and her family, because he knows she has lead a happy life. He’s never resented her for that, because he never thought he had a claim over her in the first place, not really. And he definitely wouldn’t have wanted her to pine over him for the rest of her life.

For the last three years Steve has been settling into his life, building it up bit by bit, and many people, Natasha most of all, seemed to be just as aware as he was that he was missing some pieces, and had tried to provide him with replacement. He knows why Nat had suggested him all the dates, why Fury had him work with a STRIKE team (extremely skilled and versatile, much like his Howling Commandos). Only he understood long ago that there really wasn’t replacing anything, everyone new took their own places. There was no replacing Peggy, because despite everything, she still had her own place. There was no replacing his old team, but he enjoyed working with the new one, at least until they turned on him.

And there never was even a question of replacing Bucky. Steve had thought there would always be a hole in the air, in his soul where he should have been, and it turned out not to be true. Now the hole is filled, repaired, and even if he can still feel where it used to be, he’s infinitely grateful every day.

Peggy wakes up and it is indeed a good day, better than he had hoped for and better than he had any hope expecting, really. She remembers where she is and that he came back a few years earlier. It’s obvious that she doesn’t remember what happened to SHIELD, and he doesn’t remind her either, because she doesn’t need that pain, doesn’t need to blame herself for failing to notice, which she does every time she remembers.

At first he just tells her about New York, and the Avengers, how they are starting to find their place again in the changing world. He’s kind of skirting around the subject he really wants to get to, because it still feels like he’s almost guarding a secret (and in a very real way he _is_ ). She still knows him though, maybe even better than she did during the war, and it doesn’t take her long to make the same observation her grand niece had made.

“You look happy. You also look tired, but there’s something about you that feels like you’re whole again, and it’s been decades since I saw that. Before the last missions, ever since Barnes fell, you weren’t  the same.”

It still hurts, having that moment on the train brought up. There’s the inevitable chain of blame and anger directed squarely at himself, and if he could somehow change what happened, Steve would. But the past is past, and all he can do is to try and do everything he can to not fail like that again. He pushes the thoughts away for now.

“But he didn’t die, he came back. He’s not quite well, but he’s here.”

Peggy’s curious smile softens, as she remarks, “It always was clear he was going to follow you wherever.” And then she gets more serious. “I’m going to give you some advice, from the perspective of my advanced years. I know you’ve grown a lot since we first met, but I don’t think you’ve really changed that much. There is so much intensity in you when you think something is your duty, and I think sometimes you forget that it’s not everything. Back then he followed you into the war, and he wouldn’t have gone if you hadn’t been there. And if that’s still his instinct, you have to be careful of what you ask of him, even wordlessly. Because I think you both deserve more than life in midst of a war. Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten what it’s like, and maybe you should try and remember, to try and find what are the important things for you as a person, not as an icon. To find a balance or to start over, if need be.”

“You told me before that I should try to do that, and in retrospect, I don’t think I really managed that, not fully. But maybe I will. I promise I will try.”

“That’s all anyone can ask. I suppose it’ll be easier now for Barnes, I don’t really think he liked me that much back then.”

“That’s…” Steve is about to deny that assessment, but then reflects some more. “Honestly, I don’t know exactly how it was for him. I do know he respected you, still does. And just before I left he said I worry over too many things, and to let you knock some sense in me. So clearly he still values your judgement.”

“That’s new. Back then you didn’t used to worry over too many things.”

“I know. Sometimes I think maybe I should have.”

“Don’t overcompensate though.”

“I really can’t make promises about that, but I’ll try. And thank you, for the advice.”

They talk a bit more, before Peggy gets tired and loses track again.

 

* * *

 

He’s lost the track of time. It’s light out, so it must be day, but he’s not even sure which day. He doesn’t remember when he slept the last time. Time is sliding past, sometimes skipping. Suddenly the light patch on the wall has moved, and he didn’t notice. He sits down in the hall, back against the wall, opposite to the door to Steve’s room. Just as he did before. He doesn’t remember getting up.

He’s waiting, and he remembers.

There had been countless hours of waiting. Cold rooms, sometimes in the darkness, sometimes under too bright lights. Sometimes tied onto a table, sometimes sitting back against a wall, knees bent, arms resting on knees, head on arms. Low energy, fast response. The chair. Waiting until orders came for a mission, waiting until he was put into the cold. Minutes and hours sliding by. Back then, waiting was a thing for itself, not something meaningless and expectant, but time that was his when nothing else was. It’s different now, because the end of waiting has a meaning, but the process is still the same. He lets the hours drift by. It’s easy as ever to let the background noise fade into a static buzz without a meaning.

He opens his eyes when there’s a soft touch at his ankle, and it takes a while to drag himself back into the moment. The floor underneath him is cool but it’s wood, not concrete, and for a second the memory flashes on top of the reality, trying to displace it until Bucky pushes it away, chooses the one in Steve’s apartment.

Now he knows it was Hecate that touched his leg, on her way to Steve’s room. She hops onto the bed and settles down to groom herself next to the pillow. She usually doesn’t casually touch him, and it’s not like there wasn’t space for her to walk past, but whatever the reason, he’s grateful she did it. Slipping back too far into the past makes it harder to hold on to the reality. He thought he’d gotten the hang of it during the first few months after leaving Steve on the river bank, but it’s not completely in his control yet. Maybe it will never be, and the thought scares him, because he’s not sure what he will do if he gets too tangled into the past.

Also when the reality gets less solid, all the alternatives suddenly seem more probable. Sometimes he’s almost sure he’s imagining all of this, his life with Steve. Sometimes he’s sure that he’s still HYDRA’s prisoner and everything else is just something his mind cooked up to deal with it. Sometimes he wonders if he could imagine this kind of authenticity, so much detail, and then he remembers all the vivid dreams he used to have as a child, about spaceships and monsters. They always felt so real, maybe even more real than this life.

It’s so easy to become convinced that everything he knows isn’t the truth, because there are so many alternatives, so many places where the reality could become the dream. Maybe he left Steve on the river bank and never came back. Maybe he killed Steve on the helicarrier, and this is the way his broken mind copes. Maybe he is in some motel room who knows where, crouched in a corner, imagining a better life in which he isn’t alone. Or maybe he is still HYDRA’s secret weapon, waiting for another mission in a cold concrete room. Maybe he’s still tied onto a table, screaming over the noise of the bone saw, passing out because of the pain. Maybe he’s still falling. After all they say your life flashes by in your last moments, but they don’t say whether it’s your long gone past or your lost future. Maybe he’s tied onto another table, and he’s grasping for a lifeline, something more solid, because name, rank and serial number just aren’t enough.

All of those alternatives feel more likely than this, because he has thought about probabilities, about all the things that have to have gone right to get him here, and it’s so tiny fraction that it might as well be zero. How likely would it be that Steve even survived until the procedure that made him Captain America? With all his illnesses, would he get past basic? And the procedure itself, how likely would it be that such a thing even existed, that Steve would be chosen, that he would survive it and that everything worked out perfectly? Odds decreasing all the time. Then the war; they would both need to survive, Steve would need to find him in Austria, they would have to make it through until the train. What is the likelihood that they both would survive deadly falls and end up into the same part of future, still young? How likely would it be that all of these things happened to them without fail? It’s a laughably small probability.

What is the likelihood for Steve coming out alive after he dropped his shield and gave up a fight for the first time in his life?

And then, every time he’s sure he’s just imagining, something happens that shakes it all up, like Hecate just now. Because he’d never think to give Steve a cat. Not that they even thought about pets before the war, but Steve always felt more kinship towards dogs, Bucky knows this even with the broken memory of his. And yet, there she is, curled up in Steve’s bed.

There’s a sound of a key at the front door, and it’s only then that he realises he’s been unconsciously following the faint sounds coming from outside the apartment. The familiar vibration of the engine of Steve’s bike, the long, easy strides up the stairs and in the hallway. The door opens and there’s no need to react, to reach for the gun on the floor next to him or the knife in his pocket. And maybe he should react, because there are things _people do_ to greet each other, but he doesn’t. He stays where he is, leaning into the wall, listening to Steve drop his bag and bring something to kitchen. There’s a scent of something spicy and he still doesn’t know when he ate the last time. He’s probably hungry. It’s still hard to recognize the feeling after spending so long having everything provided, ignoring everything else. He hears the fridge open and there is a pause before it closes and then a clink of a glass and liquid being poured. He stays sitting where he is.

Steve is still wearing his leather jacket when he crouches in front of Bucky, a glass of something yellow in his hand. For a moment it’s hard to focus, the surroundings still try to replace themselves with unforgiving concrete floors, and another face, close but not quite right, tries to fit itself over Steve’s. Bucky blinks, fast, and it doesn’t help. Presses his right palm against the floor and he can’t quite tell if the wood is real or not. He’d like to reach out, to touch Steve, to make sure he’s real, but he can’t. It’s not allowed; that’s the rule that was instilled into him a long time ago. Don’t touch anyone outside the parameters of mission. Also, don’t prevent anyone from touching you when back in the base. Maintenance and check-ups mustn’t be interfered with. Failing to comply was always punished.

“Bucky?” Steve asks quietly, looking at him with a deepening frown (still familiar, still worried), and the pictures, the voices, everything about the false reality shatters.

Bucky has thought about it a lot, about why he made the choices he did back on the helicarrier and before, about the things that helped HYDRA condition him and that still affect him. He’s pulled at the memory threads as much as he could, pieced together reasons and coincidences. He knows the rules instilled into him were for them and no longer apply. It doesn’t make it any easier to not adhere to the rules, especially when the reality is slipping.

He’s thought about a lot how probabilities and coincidences worked for him, but maybe there is some kind of a balance, because he knows there are a lot of ways they’ve worked against him too. It’s coming back in pieces, but he knows it was considerably harder for HYDRA to control him at first, even accounting for the less sophisticated ways of mind-control and conditioning. And then, just by a sheer accident, there was a face that was close enough, speaking words of ideas that were familiar sounding, even if he didn’t by the time know why. It had become easier for HYDRA after that, and had propelled one man’s career straight to the top. Until there was a mission where he fought a man that was stronger than anyone he’d come across and yet somehow familiar, like he knew him in his bones. Back then it had been just one word, a name he didn’t immediately recognize, but the voice had shattered his world and brought a new one, or old one, to the surface of his memories.

After that there were still the familiar words of purpose and peace and duty, the familiar face that had gotten older over the years. These were as always, but now he knew the voice was wrong, now the other familiarity wasn’t enough to cover for it. And even after they took away his new knowledge, it was still there, the voice was still wrong. His world was shattering and he didn’t want that. And yet, in the end he had delivered the final blow himself, ripped his world apart by saving Steve. It had been the first time he realised he didn’t want the world others had built for him, even if everything else scared him.

In the last year and half he has mostly managed to drown that fear, but sometimes it’s still hard to keep the other world that was instilled into him for so long from returning. He can push it away himself, but it takes time and there is always a cost to it. Here it’s easier, because Steve’s voice is something that doesn’t belong there, something that can’t be written over even if everything else can. It’s like a talisman to him, something that can’t be held, but because of this it can’t be taken away either. Not fully.

Bucky relaxes against the wall a bit more, seeing Steve properly now. There is the worry on his face, but also something relaxed, in a way he can’t quite describe, and that he hasn’t seen yet. Steve offers the glass to him and he takes it, brings it to his lips by habit. Only after the first swallow he realises how dehydrated he is, the sugar and electrolytes hitting his system. He drinks the glass empty, and Steve takes it back, still frowning.

“You haven’t eaten in a while.”

Not a question, a statement, and it’s true, Bucky now does recognize the emptiness and vertigo that comes when he’s gone beyond hunger. There are probably things he should say, to explain, and the only thing that comes out is something that’s not even true for the moment.

“It’s hard to tell the reality from what’s inside my head.”

Steve doesn’t seem confused by this admission, and maybe it is because their conversations don’t follow that many logical paths these days (even though they are getting better) and he’s always been so adaptive. Instead he looks at Bucky’s right hand that has closed itself into a fist, like it’s grasping for something.

“I don’t know if you remember, but you said almost the same thing to me the night after we made it to the basecamp from the HYDRA factory in Austria,” Steve says and reaches inside his jacket to take something out. Bucky can only see the ball chain falling out of Steve’s hand but not what’s attached to it. Steve gently prys the fingers of his right hand open, places something on his palm, curls his fingers back around it and then covers his hand with both his own. The shape in his hand is instantly familiar and more, he remembers it was his habit to fiddle with his tags ever since he got them. And he remembers another Steve, younger, with longer hair and dressed in a captain’s uniform, again curling his fingers around the tags. And just as now, there were two different names on them.

“It used to help you back then I think, to have something tangible to hold on to.” Steve gets back to his feet and holds his hand out to Bucky who takes it with his left, gets hauled up to stand. His knees protest moving. “Now come to eat, I brought Indian food.” Hecate finally realises Steve is back and does her best to trip him up when they walk towards the kitchen.

Later he’s sitting in the corner of the couch, tired but not sleepy, watching and listening Steve move about the apartment. He keeps fiddling with the tags, running the pads of his fingers over the names, his and Steve’s. Steve comes to water the plants he’s moved onto the table by the living room window since it’s too cold outside for them. He let’s out a low chuckle, and notices Bucky looking at him and explains without him having to ask.

“I’m not sure if you remembered to eat anything yourself while I was gone, but Hecate had full bowls and even the herbs are watered.”

***

It takes him a while to recover from the weekend, but after that it is again easier to interact with Steve, to stay in the living room and not in his bedroom. Another thing that changes is that the near constant fear of leaving the apartment lessens. It’s not completely gone, there are still days when he stays in, not leaving even for a run with Steve, but the days (and nights) when he can go out and wander in the city without the fear of something making him run and never come back are more common. Steve definitely notices the change and starts to ask him to come out for other reasons besides running; to get coffee or food (even if they never stay out to eat) or just for a walk after he comes from work.

Slowly as the autumn works its way towards winter his life becomes more and more normal. As much as it can be, anyway. There are still bad days and more common bad nights, although Steve occasionally shares those. If he’s up when Steve has a nightmare they often end up in the living room, watching something on the Netflix, waiting until it’s a bit closer to morning to go for a run. It really hits him how much his circumstances have changed one day when he’s coming back from a walk after stopping at a coffeeshop, and their neighbor’s little girl Luisa happens at the door the same time as him, and he gets a cheerful greeting, “Good afternoon Captain America’s friend.” He’s so surprised by it that it takes him longer than normal to reply, but she doesn’t seem to mind, just tells him to say hi to Hecate for her. Back in the apartment Hecate is sitting across from the door, clearly having heard him come up.

It’s early November when the first bigger incident where the Avengers are needed since he came to live with Steve happens. Bucky gets a text in the early afternoon, short and to the point, _mission. probably won’t be back tonight_. He puts CNN on and goes to make coffee since he’s not going to sleep, he knows it already. Coffee these days doesn’t really do anything for him as a stimulant, but it’s more about the ritual of making it and just having a cup in his hand. It’s one constant he’s had through any even remotely decent time in his life. The taste is different, especially compared to the coffee from rations during the war, but it’s still coffee. It’s another kind of talisman.

Thirty five hours later it’s just past midnight and he’s pacing in the hallway waiting for Steve to come home. The incident was wrapped earlier (it was a group of criminals with apparent HYDRA aspirations), no major casualties despite the terrorists best efforts to cause mayhem, although they did take a spirited but ultimately unsuccessful effort at killing Captain America, and Steve didn’t escape unharmed. He’d texted earlier, _I’m fine_ , but Bucky doesn’t really feel that reassured, since he knows what Steve considers as fine when it comes to himself is not quite the same as other people’s definition (or even his own when it comes to other people).

The details he got from the news are rare, late and inaccurate. Frustrating mostly, and he’d been caught in a sort of limbo of wanting to close the tv and not being able to. He’d known it would happen sooner or later that the Avengers would have to fight and he’d be at home following every bit of news he could. He hadn’t known how he’d react, and truth be told he still doesn’t. He knows that even if he didn’t want to fight in the war, he still had chosen to be a part of Howling Commandos, perhaps the most risky group in the Allied forces. It had been clear to him then that since Steve was going so would he, because it was the only chance he had to try and keep him safe. He had known this, but it hadn’t had a true meaning for him after he started to remember. Not until now. He found himself standing in front of the tv, hand twitching as if his fingers wanted to curl around a rifle. His brain was calculating how long it would take to find weapons and to make his way where the fight was (too long).

At the same time, now that he can choose, to think about it, fighting is also something he doesn’t really want to do. Everything is still the same as ever; maybe he ends up having to do something he doesn’t want to, because the alternative is worse. The only difference is he doesn’t know what it’ll do if he truly takes up arms again. He still has weapons, knives and handguns, and he runs and keeps himself in shape in other ways. These things are too instilled in him for him to stop. But there are other things he’s pushed further and further away since he left Steve on the riverbank, until he felt they were far enough for him to be able to reach some sort of normalcy, to make living another kind of life possible. And he doesn’t know if going to battle with Steve would mean crossing lines to a place from where he couldn’t come back.

There’s a sound of a car and from the window he sees it’s Steve with Wilson and Romanova. His arm is in a sling and he gets helped out, which means by Bucky’s definition he’s definitely not fine. He slips the tags he’s been playing with into his pocket and goes to put the coffee maker on. Again.

It’s not really Steve’s injuries that disturb him the most, they are what they are, and since it’s all done and dusted, they’re not too serious and he’ll heal within days unless there’s something more significant than he can detect from the window. He doesn’t think so, because otherwise Romanova and Wilson are as crazy as Steve to let him walk around and he has a whole another problem. What strikes him is how despite clearly being in pain Steve is smiling, glowing to be precise, and it’s another thing he hadn’t remembered until now. It is the thing that always scared him about Steve, the thing that drove him to aim for bigger things, be they back alley fights or taking down HYDRA basically by himself. It is beautiful to see, it suddenly strikes him (he’s not sure if he ever realised this in his previous life), but it does scare him. Because when Steve is like this, he won’t back down, won’t stop. It’s like a drug and at some point it’ll mean Bucky will lose Steve, one way or another. The knowledge is sharp as a razor on his skin, as is the knowledge that Steve doesn’t understand it, and probably never will.

He unlocks the door to the apartment and opens it a crack, and then realises it’s the first time there will be other people in besides him and Steve. Other people aren’t a problem in general, even if he usually avoids having to meet anyone, but the apartment isn’t a space like any other, it’s theirs, and somehow other people coming there feels weird.

He’s in the living room when they come in, Steve being supported by Wilson, Romanova carrying Steve’s shield, which is something else that just feels wrong in his head. The wartime is mostly chaos for him, he hasn’t delved too deep into those memories because they are too close to HYDRA, but he does remember how attached Steve has always been to his shield. It was on his back most of the time and he carried it always himself, even the rare few times he was injured during the war. Now she has it, and Bucky knows it means Steve trusts her, probably more than she realises.

Steve introduces everyone, although only after Wilson has settled him on the sofa, and that tells Bucky there probably are other injuries besides the shield arm (looks like dislocated shoulder, but back to place, should be mostly fine in a few days) and left leg (knee works fine, and it doesn’t look any bones are broken). He notices Steve wince when he draws breath to speak. Ribs then.

“Just so you know, you’re definitely not fine,” he says, focusing on Steve and mostly ignoring Wilson (smiling and trying to look unfazed but definitely tense underneath it all) and Romanova (serious, assessing, still holding the shield). “But I’m not surprised, I distinctly remember you insisting you were fine right after being shot in the war.”

Steve, the way that he is, just grins and cocks his head. “Really? Which time?”

Bucky wants to hit him, despite the fact he’s already injured. And he suddenly has a hard time breathing, because Steve keeps smiling and he seems happy, not the way he is after a battle but the way Bucky remembers him from lazy sunny Sunday afternoons a lifetime ago.

“It’s not like you can talk anyway,” Steve continues, “Like back in Austria you insisted on walking yourself and not needing medical attention.”

“I don’t remember,” Bucky says, and he doesn’t; the only thing he clearly remembers is blinking his eyes as Steve’s new face swam into his field of vision and feeling more thankful than ever before in his life. And more desperate all at the same time. He pushes the thought away and points at Steve’s arm. “Are those stitches?”

“Yeah, I made sure to have them done before I got home, because you were always hopeless at suturing.”

“Not like it would matter, that small a wound won’t even leave a permanent scar for you,” Bucky dismisses, and is distracted from how it feels familiar and yet is the kind of conversation they haven’t had since he came home by Wilson snorting. He is smiling for real now, and is considerably less tense Bucky notes, even if not completely at ease either.

“I think I need to crash at home, I see we are not needed here since you’ll get told you’re too reckless without us having to,” Wilson says to Steve and winks at Bucky.

“Bucky has a lot more experience in it if nothing else,” Steve just agrees, but Bucky can tell he’s in pain. Definitely all the way broken ribs then instead of just cracked.

“Get some rest and don’t even think about coming to HQ before Monday,” Romanova says.

She’s much harder to read than Wilson, still looking at Bucky completely serious, but before she leaves she hands the shield to Bucky instead of just leaving it leaning into a wall somewhere.

After they’re gone Hecate appears from wherever she had hidden herself and climbs on Steve’s lap purring happily. Steve scratches her head for a bit, settling more comfortably on the couch. Looks like his breathing is a bit easier, and Bucky goes into the kitchen for the coffee. He pours out two cups, brings them to living room and hands one to Steve who just keeps smiling at him. He doesn’t ask about details of the battle, doesn’t care what happened beyond what he can already tell. They don’t really talk, and Bucky remembers how quiet moments between them often were comfortable, like it is now and hasn’t been since he came. Before it always felt like the silence was filled with unsaid things, things Bucky wanted to say but couldn’t, sometimes didn’t even know exactly what they were, and things Steve wanted to say but didn’t dare, maybe out of fear of upsetting Bucky. This silence now is different, comfortable, wrapping around them like a friend.

Bucky keeps an eye on Steve who by the time he sets his empty cup down is definitely drowsy, the way he gets when he is healing and there’s no reason to be alert. Bucky helps him to bed and then gets another cup of coffee for himself. After he puts the cups into the washer, tidies up the rest of the kitchen, and then gives up to the impulse in his head. This time he crosses the threshold to Steve’s room only after a moment of hesitation, and sits on the floor by Steve’s bed.

Steve is, same as ever, sleeping on one half of his bed and not the middle, although not on his side like he usually does but on his back which is easier on the broken ribs. Hecate lies half on his arm between it and his torso, and doesn’t even twitch when Bucky comes in. And maybe it’s the pain or unusual sleeping position, but clearly Steve isn’t sleeping as deeply as he usually does, because only minutes after Bucky settled down there’s a change in Steve’s breathing.

“You should go to sleep as well,” Steve says, words slurring a bit. Clearly he’s not all the way awake. “I could tell you haven’t in a while.”

Bucky doesn’t answer, he doesn’t have an answer beyond the fact that going to the other room feels wrong on every level, even if he logically knows Steve isn’t about to take a turn for worse. He doesn’t know how to put that into words, doesn’t think he ever did, but turns out he doesn’t have to, because Steve huffs a little at him and smiles.

“If you still have the old hang up of not wanting to let me out of your sight when I’m sick, that’s fine, plenty of room here.” Steve pats the other side of the bed, and when Bucky hesitates, he says, “If you’re not going to lie down I’m getting up too.”

The responding sigh from Bucky is completely automatic, not something he has to think about doing like most of his interactions with people. It occurs to him that most of the interactions with Steve that night have been like that, and that it probably has something to do with the familiarity from before the war, but doesn’t chase the thought. Instead he just says, “That’s blackmail.”

“Trust me, I learned that entirely from you. Besides it’s for your own good,” Steve says and after Bucky has curled on the other side of the bed (on top of the covers, but Steve doesn’t remark upon it) whispers, “Night, Buck.”

Bucky lies in the dark, listening to Steve’s even breathing that becomes slower and shallower as he falls asleep. Bucky thinks he’s content to wait the night out watching.

***

He wakes up a bit groggy, a narrow beam of sunlight falling on the bed from where the curtains aren’t fully closed. He’s still on his side but he’s now covered by a blanket that’s usually folded on the chest at the foot of the bed and that he definitely didn’t take for himself. There’s no sight of Steve but he can hear the shower on in the bathroom, and there’s a faint smell of coffee in the air. He stretches a bit and only notices that Hecate is curled at the bend of his knees when she makes a protesting _mrrrt_ sound at being jostled.

He sits up and glances at the alarm clock on the nightstand, and is surprised to find that it’s nearly ten. He contemplates on getting up but doesn’t manage to move before Steve comes back in wearing only a pair of threadbare sweatpants, running a towel through his hair. He doesn’t have the limp anymore, but his movements are stiffer than usual, and his ribs are clearly still hurting. He smiles again at Bucky, as if there was nothing in the world to worry him.

“Morning Buck. Sleep okay?” Bucky nods because it is true, he really did sleep fine. Steve hands him the rolls of bandages. “Help me wrap my ribs, they’re much better, but the support is probably still a good idea at least for today.”

Bucky gets up to do it, and when Steve hangs his towel on the chair he notices the tattoos. They are seven small stars on the left side over Steve’s ribs, only black lines and no color. Steve catches him looking at them, and he says, “I don’t remember those.”

“You wouldn’t. They were done after… after we caught Zola.” Bucky notices the pause where Steve clearly chooses his words, might be for Bucy’s benefit. Or maybe for his own, because he swallows before he continues. “Six of them anyway. The last one was done last year.”

Looking closer, Bucky can tell that they are definitely done at different times, six of them already fading due to Steve’s enhanced healing, looking decades old, the last one much clearer. He wraps the bandages around Steve’s torso, and suddenly remembers having done it before, except Steve was smaller back then. As the stars disappear under the layers, Steve quietly remarks, “There’s one for each time you saved my life,” and then before Bucky can sort out his head to say anything, “Come for breakfast, I’ll make pancakes.”

***

On Saturday Steve is completely fine again, and clearly tired of being cooped up inside. Instead of their normal run, they take a long walk early in the morning. Bucky is mostly quiet, listening to Steve talk about their neighbors, point out places they happen to pass (“they have great coffee, that place has the best selection of fruits, I got the Indian food from the other day from there”). Bucky doesn’t even pay too much attention, just lets the words wash over him, listening to Steve’s voice.

They make it to the shore, get coffees to go from a tiny place by the pier and then lean on the railing, just looking at the waves. It’s a grey day and if the wind gets any stronger they’ll have to leave because of the spray. Steve seems content to just stand there for a while, and Bucky finds himself to be so as well. There’s something wrong in the picture though, until he remembers that before the war if they made it to the sea, Steve always had his sketchbook with him. There must have been dozens of drawings of waves and seagulls and boats, some of Bucky sitting on the pier. Not many, because he used to be too twitchy to sit still, most of the time anyway. He thinks there were sketches of him reading, because that was something he used to do that made him stay mostly still. It occurs to him he hasn’t seen Steve draw anything since the war, but he doesn’t ask about it.

He drinks the coffee standing next to Steve, leaning on the railing, and he doesn’t even know where the memory comes, because the circumstances are completely different. It’s just a flash, more an image than a real memory, but he can taste the whisky on his tongue, hear the noise of rowdy men and piano at the bar. Remembers how Steve, dressed in a uniform and with a longer hair, smiled a little and looked away. If the bar had been lit more brightly he knows he would have seen just a hint of flush on Steve’s cheeks, and it wouldn’t have been due to alcohol. He remembers how the look in Steve’s eyes used to be younger, more carefree even in the midst of war.

Now Steve looks older if only by a little, but there is something in his eyes sometimes, a look that suggests that he really has lived through all ninety-seven years since his birth and not slept in a stasis for most of them.

And there is something he should say, something he needs Steve to know. “I couldn’t let you find me.” He should continue with an apology except it tangles in his throat, the words too heavy on his lips.

“I know. I’m sorry it took me so long to realise the best thing I could do was to stay still and wait.”

There is a part of him that finds some dark amusement in that Steve in the end was the one to apologize, and another part wants to argue that Steve shouldn’t feel that way. The rest of him just feels light, lighter than he has so far.

They make it back home just before it starts to rain.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was very much about Bucky, next one has more Steve again (probably), and some plot crashing on their heads.


	5. a litany of dreams

“You look like hell. Have for pretty much the whole week now, actually. Thought you should know that.” Sam is mostly serious but there is a hint of amusement in his eyes.

“I know that, I’m feeling it aren’t I?”

“Debatable, I’ve seen you push through exhaustion before, and I’m pretty sure then you didn’t know how tired you actually were.”

“I knew, but it just didn’t matter as much back then.”

Steve is not lying, he knows and knew even as it happened how close to his physical limits he came during the search for Bucky. It never got to the point where he would have just collapsed, but it was a near thing and only avoided because Sam had been there, telling him to stop, to rest, to eat. Generally Sam had just been an unconditional support even when he didn’t really believe that they’d find Bucky or that it’d be Bucky that they’d find. Steve doesn’t think he can ever repay for it.

While looking for Bucky he’d pushed himself on because he had a purpose, something driving him. Now he actually feels more exhausted than back then, even if he’s been taking it easy since he was injured. There hasn’t been a crisis that would have required them deployed, and for all that it feels like a calm before a storm, he’s been taking advantage of it. The tiredness he feels isn’t due to pushing himself, it’s from not sleeping and just general mental exhaustion.

“It’s just. I don’t know. _Unfair_ ,” he finally huffs and the second he says it he wants to take it back. Because he doesn’t really have the right to feel that way.

Steve drops his head on the table for a moment and knows he’s probably being ridiculous, but he just doesn’t have the energy to restrain himself. Or more precisely, he’s with Sam, so he doesn’t feel the need to scrape together the will to not be ridiculous. It feels good and he is grateful to have made such a friend with whom everything is that easy. Fourth time he was that lucky, he thinks.

They are at a little cafe by the VA where Sam volunteers as often as he has time from his Avenger duties, and Steve had come over for the Sunday morning group, to just listen to the stories as he sometimes does. He gets recognized most of the time, but here everyone always treats him like a fellow soldier that has gone through similar things as them, not as a superhero celebrity hybrid that the media tends to parade around (and doesn’t he hate that portrayal). There are only a few customers in the cafe, and Steve and Sam are sitting at the corner table, pretty much as private as one can get and still be actually out. It’s all just very comfortable.

“What do you mean by unfair?” Sam asks, looking completely serious now, just listening.

Steve sits back up, and shakes his head. “It’s, well, I know that it’s getting better with Bucky, he’s more like, I don’t want to say like he used to be, but like he’s doing things because he wants to instead of just following patterns given to him. He’s also interacting with me more. It’s better and I’m grateful but some things are also getting worse. Or it feels like that to me, I’m not always sure about him.”

Sam makes a noncommittal hum. “Worse how?”

“He’s not talking about it, but it’s quite obvious he’s piecing together more of his memories, and while some of the process is clearly good for him, most of it really isn’t. And obviously that’s not a surprise, we know what kind of things he went through. Only I’m starting to realise there’s more, and the kind of things I didn’t even think about. I guess it was naive of me to not think about those sort of things.”

“More like a healthy defense mechanism, there were plenty of horrible things you were already thinking about. How do you know what he remembers, if he doesn’t talk about it?”

“He doesn’t, not willingly, but sometimes, when he has less of a grip of reality he lets things slip, just bits and pieces. Enough for me to get the idea.”

“Does it happen more often, I mean the times he doesn’t know where he is? And how does he react?”

“He’s not violent, if that’s what you’re asking, not towards me. But I wouldn’t risk other people. I’m not sure how that would go.” Steve hates admitting it, but it is the truth. “And yes, there are more of the episodes where that kind of dissociation happens. I suppose it comes from remembering, or actually understanding what those memories mean. He did say they used to be just bits and pieces in his head, broken up because of the memory erasures, and because of that there was no context. Ii was easier to just ignore them I guess. Now he’s gaining that, context, and it’s harder. A lot harder for him. Because he can’t stop it, doesn’t want to either, he keeps pulling at the strings and it hurts him to remember what he did. And he doesn’t believe it if I tell him it wasn’t his fault. Not fully anyway. He suffered through all the seventy years and now he’s free and still there are new ways for him to suffer because of what they did to him.”

“And that’s what you think is unfair,” Sam guesses. “For the record, you are perfectly within your rights to feel that way. I’d say it’s pretty natural, actually.”

“It just feels so childish to feel that way. It’s not useful in any way. I’ve talked about it with Nicole, and she says unfortunately that’s how it is with trauma recovery, it’s not step after step towards better, some things get worse at first, and some things even need to get worse so that they can get better. Doesn’t really help when it’s happening, and it’s just so exhausting, for Bucky, and for me.”

“At least I don’t have to tell you to talk with Nicole about it. I would have, since that’s why we have her, for professional opinion and help on these sort of things.”

“Yeah, believe it or not, I actually did listen to you about talking to her regularly. It’s still kind of weird but I guess it works. And I’m sorry, I actually know all of these things I pile on you, I’m just…”

“Grousing. I get it, it’s all right. I can take it, and you need to unload to someone other than your psychiatrist sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Steve admits, and notes that it’s starting to get easier, just to admit he’s out of his depth and needs support.

“I can do that, and in return I’ll have you listen to me rant some other time. I occasionally have a cause to do that.”

“Deal.”

They drink the rest of their coffee and talk about football before they both head home. Steve is halfway there when he remembers something he thought about earlier that week, and maybe he should have shared it with Sam. If nothing else it would have made Sam laugh, and probably tell him the same thing Peggy has told him more than once; that he’s overly dramatic. And maybe he is, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’d had a thought that sometimes it’s much easier to die for something than to live for something.

Death never scared him, and for a cause it had even felt oddly satisfying, the thought of laying down his life. But now no one and nothing needs him to die, but Bucky very much needs him to live, and so he does. He takes the exhaustion, the worry, the hurt, the anger, all the hard things and rolls with it, because that’s what he needs to do. And it’s all worth it, because despite everything, he is happier than he has been since 1945. It’s a feeling that doesn’t come completely free of guilt, but not many things do for him these days.

 

* * *

 

He had wanted to make sense of the things floating inside his head, to find a meaning for them, something to solidify them into memories within a context instead of just broken fragments, and for a year and a bit more he had tried with the help of documents and recordings only. Hard evidence, nothing more, nothing less. It helped, a bit, but he didn’t make that much progress. And then, after months and months of knowing that Steve was looking for him, knowing that they used to know each other, he’d finally been less terrified than curious to face what it actually meant. He hadn’t known that when he first stepped into Steve’s apartment.

Now, he knows a little bit more, has some idea of why he suddenly couldn’t bear the idea of Steve being hurt in any way. It still feels like he doesn’t have the whole picture, there is something missing, but he doesn’t know what exactly. He’s pored over all the records of them, read countless books, watched every bit of film there is of the two of them, and there is nothing that would explain his sense of what’s missing. Every recorded thing of them that exists is familiar, he remembers at least bits of them. Their childhood, living together after Steve’s mother passed away, the war. _Inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield_. It’s true, and yet it feels like there is something else, a truth underneath the truth, that he’s looking for.

Sometimes he almost catches a hold of it, in a dream maybe, one of those that leave him feeling warm and oddly nervous. Or something someone has written about them in a book or on the countless discussion threads on the internet. Or in the few split seconds in the films, moments scattered here and there, when there’s something in Steve’s expression or in his own that he almost recognized, but that is gone before he has a chance to do so. Replaying doesn’t help, he’s left empty handed time and time again. Steve would probably know, and would certainly tell him if he asked, if only he knew what exactly it was that he wanted to ask for. Maybe even if he didn’t find the right question. He doesn’t try though, because the thought terrifies him, somehow he knows that nothing will be the same afterwards, and he has no way of knowing if the change would be a good thing. For him, or for Steve.

He remembers other things, knows now what they mean. He keeps pulling them into light, laying them out in his mind and looking at them. Every death, every face, every name he remembers. All that blood. He doesn’t want to do it and he can’t not do it.

He wanted context, meaning, and now he has it and it doesn’t make things better. Or it does, but only some of the things, and everything else is a thousand times worse. He’s fairly sure he never would have gotten this far if he hadn’t come to stay with Steve, even though he doesn’t ask about these things. He doesn’t really ask about anything. Somehow just being with Steve aligns things for him, makes it easier to remember. Makes a lot of things easier. And because of it, a lot of things are now much harder. And yet, he doesn’t regret coming to stay with Steve, not even on the days he wishes that someone really could wipe out memories, and would just take all the images, all the noise away. He never regrets for a second.

Sometimes he thinks the Bucky from before the war would be disappointed that he doesn’t regret, that he wasn’t strong enough to just disappear and leave Steve in his new life with his team, with so much less to worry about without him.

***

It’s been a difficult week for him, more so than usual. The memories have felt heavy and made him feel sluggish. It has been hard to concentrate on anything, or find a will to do things. He hasn’t been out of the apartment for days, not by himself or with Steve. It’s a setback and it irritates him because he realises it is one, and yet he can’t do anything about it.

It’s been two weeks since Steve was injured while fighting, and after his recovery at first everything felt easier, it had felt like something had shifted, both between them and for Bucky specifically. The day after they took the walk to the shore they went running. It was a beautiful, crisp November morning, and Bucky’s step was light, and for once he almost didn’t notice the imbalance his slightly heavier left arm created. For a few days everything had been good. After that he’d slowly started slipping: there were nightmares, moments in the day when he realised time had passed without him noticing, and just generally his energy was drained.

Now he’s sitting on the hallway floor, leaning to the wall. His usual place for that kind of a thing, right opposite Steve’s door. The wood underneath his bare feet is cold, and sometimes he can’t quite tell if it’s actually wood or concrete underneath him. He knows he should get up, move, find something to do to prevent himself slipping into the past. He doesn’t. Instead he settles his right hand on Hecate’s back, feels the warm fur and rapid heartbeat that doesn’t belong anywhere in his memories, that only exists here and now. She rolls onto her side without opening her eyes and he scratches underneath her chin for a bit, until another memory surfaces and he feels nauseous touching another living being with his hand that has taken so many lives. Hecate continues purring next to him, as if everything is fine. He knows she doesn’t particularly like laying on the floor now that it’s cold.

The door clicks shut after Steve who announces his arrival with a hello that is more subdued than usual. Bucky knows Steve is also tired, hasn’t been sleeping that well either, and hasn’t really taken it easy whatever Steve himself might say, going running and to work just as usual. At least there haven’t been any Avengers emergencies. He thinks again of getting up, finding something to do. Doesn’t. Hecate stirs and trots towards the door and meows the hello she only does for Steve. She has a different sound for Bucky.

Steve stops on his tracks when he comes round the corner and sees Bucky, who doesn’t look at him, doesn’t want to see if Steve’s expression is tired, if he is close to giving up before reaching to that seemingly endless supply of stubbornness that goes for strength more often than it should have to. There are none of those kinds of things for him to see when Steve crouches in front of him and he’d have to actively look away to avoid looking at Steve. There are shadows under Steve’s eyes and a worried frown between his eyebrows, but all Bucky can see is understanding. Sometimes it rankles him, because he doesn’t even understand himself anymore most of the time. And since that’s how it is, how could Steve understand him either. That’s for some other time, though, right now he just accepts it.

Seeing that Bucky has at least somewhat stable grip on reality, Steve stands up and extends his hand. “Come sit on the couch, it’s cold on the floor.”

After a beat Bucky takes the offered hand with his right and lets Steve pull him up. As soon as he’s standing Steve lets go and following the example Bucky does too. He wonders what would happen if he just didn’t. It’s a new thought and yet it feels like a memory. While walking to the living room he can still feel Steve’s touch, warm around his fingers, and remembers Steve’s hands used to be cold before the war, except when he had fever. Back then if Steve had warm hands it was a bad sign. He curls up in the corner of the couch, works his feet under the blanket Steve hands him.

Steve goes to kitchen and returns with mugs of steaming hot coffee. The sugar hits into his bloodstream, and he remembers he didn’t really eat any breakfast. Or lunch. For now he’s content to sit in the corner of the couch, drink his coffee and let Steve tell him about a dog he saw in the park. Later Hecate will come and pester them about her dinner, and Steve will talk him into eating, and it’ll be a normal night. Hopefully.

 

* * *

 

Steve doesn’t know what wakes him; maybe it’s a sound, maybe just a shift in the air. The clock on the nightstand says 2:37 and at first he doesn’t notice anything unusual. And then he sees the shadow that doesn’t belong there, right before it moves.

“Buck?” he asks sitting slowly up, suddenly wide awake.

There is something about Bucky, the way he stands still, in the shadowy corner, that isn’t quite right. There is a tension in him, but not the kind that makes one nervous and sloppy. It’s the kind that makes one ready for anything that might happen. It’s not right and it’s also familiar. Bucky comes a bit closer, into the faint light coming through the curtains. His every movement is efficient, concise. It’s all Winter Soldier. He hasn’t said a word.

“Bucky?” Steve tries again, his brain cataloguing possible outcomes, some of them bad, none of them particularly good, but he hasn’t even decided his next move when suddenly the tension seems to bleed out of Bucky.

Bucky almost collapses against the wall behind him and slides down to sit on the floor. Steve clicks on the bedside lamp and then goes to Bucky taking the blanket with him. Bucky is only wearing a sleeveless shirt and he’s barefooted. The temperature has gone down during the night, and the apartment is almost uncomfortably cool. Steve wraps the blanket around Bucky and intends to get up again to turn up the heat, but Bucky grabs his wrist with his left hand, and he settles back down. The metal is freezing, and he wonders if it feels like that also at Bucky’s shoulder.

For a while they are quiet, Bucky clearly trying to catch hold of some elusive memory, and Steve just waits. He keeps the arm Bucky still holds onto (tight but not painful) completely still. He’s also starting to get cold in the t-shirt he wears to bed, but it doesn’t matter.

Finally Bucky speaks, halting between the words. “What are we?”

It’s a question that catches in Steve’s head, like wheels spinning in mud. He knows what Bucky means, to ask what they mean to each other, and it’s a question he doesn’t have an answer, or maybe he has too many answers. It’s something he’s always found hard to explain to anyone asking. Best friends, brothers in arms; the qualifiers everyone knows about. But those feel lacking. There are other words he could choose, but they still feel fragile and dreamlike, as if saying them aloud would cause them to disappear like smoke in the wind. And then there is time. What were they? Do those truths still apply? Over time, over death, over suffering and ice. He doesn’t know. He still hasn’t got an answer, but Bucky is waiting for him to say something.

“We are us. Everything. Anything we want to be. I know it’s not a very satisfying answer, but it’s all I have.”

For a moment more Bucky stays completely still before he shudders, lets go of Steve’s arm and pulls the blanket tighter around himself. Steve doesn’t know what to make of it, doesn’t know if what he said was the right thing. All he can do is hope it wasn’t the wrong thing, and right now, he thinks it could be either way.

He manages to coax Bucky to sit on his bed, still wrapped in the blanket. He gets warmer clothes for both of them, puts the heat on and makes coffee. When he peeks out through the blinds while waiting for it, he sees it’s snowing. They don’t sleep anymore that night.

***

Steve isn’t even remotely surprised when it turns out a swarm of robots attack New York the next day. That’s just his luck these days that something like that would happen after a mostly sleepless night on a taxing week. Although he  has to admit it feels good to punch things (and he knows exactly what Nicole would say to that).

It’s an actual splinter cell of HYDRA this time, not some pretenders, and they have somehow hoarded a bunch of Ultron robots. They don’t work quite as smoothly as they did while being controlled by the rogue AI, but they still pack a punch. There isn’t much civilian casualties, the robots seem to be a way to call Avengers out, and Steve has their people at the HQ keeping an eye on anything else that might be happening. The whole thing smells like a diversion to him, but they don’t hear about anything else.

Steve is on the ground with Wanda, working his way steadily through the robots and knocking out the occasional HYDRA goon. He’s not tired or distracted, it’s just the kind of thing that happens in a battle sometimes. Ending up in a situation where you’re about to get hurt, knowing it perfectly well, as well as that there’s nothing to do about it. He flings the shield at one robot and turns so that he can block the other one with his arm instead of taking the full force of the contact on his torso (after all his ribs just healed), but the hit never lands.

The robot falls to the ground, its powersource damaged by a precise shot right through. As do the four others in their general vicinity in a rapid succession. Five perfect hits on moving targets from a distance of several hundred yards within fifteen seconds. Practically an impossibility. He turns and sees a dark shape on top of the building that he knows is the only possible place the shots could have come from. He knows perfectly well that the only reason he sees anything is because Bucky lets him.

“It’s okay, we’re safe,” Steve then tells Wanda, who’s clearly on the edge after the invisible (to her anyway) ally dropped the robots. He listens some more, and hears no more sounds of battle. “Avengers, status,” he commands and gets four all clear responses, as well as an update from HQ that there seems to be no additional activity anywhere they know of.

There is the clean-up to take care of, and Steve’s head is only half in it, but luckily Maria is handling most of the details. He doesn’t even consider going up the building; he knows he’d find nothing there, not even shell casings.

He said to Wanda they were safe, and truth be told he’d felt more safe in a battle than he had since 1945. In fact it was exactly the same feeling, but back then it had filled him with confidence, made everything easier. Now it brings a bitter taste to his mouth.

***

Clean-up and debriefings take time, and Steve goes through the procedure even if all he wants is to be at home. But this is his team, and he owes them the best performance he has. Today it’s not quite to the usual standard, he knows he’s short with words, doesn’t stop to talk as much as he usually does when he makes his rounds to see how everyone is. He notices the way Sam and Natasha keep looking at him and then at each other, and notices them talking with Wanda, but he ignores it all. He’s not at all in the mood to talk about it with anyone other than Bucky, and even then he has no idea what he’ll say.

When he finally gets home it’s late and dark. He closes the door without calling out his usual greeting, lays the shield down against the wall, pets Hecate who tries her best to trip him, and then makes his way into the apartment. The lights are on which is usually a good sign, it means Bucky hasn’t lost track of time or gotten stuck in his memories.

He finds Bucky sitting on the couch in living room, reading a book, looking as if nothing special had happened. It throws Steve, even more than realising in the middle of a battle that Bucky was there. And he realises he’s angry, but doesn’t quite know at what. Not at Bucky, not really, but it’s just the two of them, and it’s been a long day after a long week, and his storage of self-possession turns out to be used up.

“What were you even thinking, there was no need for you to come,” he demands and at least his voice is enough in control that he’s not shouting.

Bucky looks at him as if he just asked the stupidest question in the world. “Looks like there was. You were about to get hurt.”

“We had it under control. I have a team and I can handle getting a knock. That’s not a reason for you to get back into it again.”

“That’s not a reason for me to just sit back when I can stop you from getting hurt.” Bucky’s voice is also louder now and he also stands up.

“That’s not… for that? You’d go back for me? I don’t want…” Steve stops in the middle of his sentence when there is just a hint of stricken expression in Bucky’s eyes. He stops, because he’s not quite sure of what exactly he was about to say, but he knows it would have been wrong. Maybe already starting to say it was wrong, has done damage.

For a moment they just stand there, staring at each other, and then Bucky seems to deflate, but there’s steel in his voice when he tells Steve, “Well, that’s all I am now.”

With that Bucky leaves, and then Steve hears him close the door to his room almost silently. Steve is left standing in the middle of the living room, and he knows that the way he reacted was wrong. He doesn’t know what the right way to react would have been, but this undoubtedly was wrong, and may have broken something beyond repair. He hopes not, but he knows it’s a possibility. After all, it has been his single biggest fear since Bucky came home; that he makes a mistake somewhere, does or says something that hurts Bucky, sets his recovery back.

Bucky doesn’t appear for the rest of the night, and Steve doesn’t try to talk to him either. Twice he stops outside Bucky’s door, but he has no words, nothing he can think of that will make it right. He goes to sleep, has nightmares one after another, and wakes up feeling just as tired as he was in the evening. The apartment is silent, as it has been since Bucky disappeared behind his closed door, and Steve might as well be alone. Maybe he even is; he knows Bucky sometimes goes out through his window.

He goes for his run alone, and when he comes back the coffee pot is cold and empty. It’s the first time since Bucky came back, not counting the times Bucky came running with him. For a moment he stands in the kitchen, staring at the pot, and then makes coffee himself, as he used to do months ago when he lived alone. He still doesn’t know what to say to make it better, and so he leaves for work without trying.

***

Sam and Natasha take the hint that Steve doesn’t want to talk about what happened the day before, beyond the actual Avengers business, and they work alongside him, reviewing the battle and adjusting their procedures, which is a constant process. Steve is grateful for it, for the company and the understanding. They both can be pushy, Natasha especially, but they also know when it just wouldn’t help, and this day is one of those. Steve knows that if he can’t solve things with Bucky soon, or if it’s clear there is a change, he will have to ask for their help, but first he needs to try for himself. Working and concentrating on other things helps, loosens the tension he’s felt since the day before.

In the afternoon he and Wanda have their session where he teaches her hand-to-hand combat. It’s useful to have her know other defensive measures besides her magic, powerful though it is, and they have also noticed that since her magic is somewhat connected to body movement, actually being proficient in combat makes her better at magic as well. It helps her focus and keep the kind of mindset she needs to perform. Both Steve and Natasha have taught her; Steve mostly now that they are combining a little bit of magic in the practice, since with his shield and general superhuman physique he can take a hit a bit better than unenhanced humans. Wanda can use less restraint and the training is more efficient for her. It’s also a good workout for Steve, and in the end he again feels calmer, more centered.

Afterwards they are resting with their drinks, and it’s clear Wanda wants to ask him about the previous day. Now talking about it doesn’t feel as difficult as in the morning, and besides, since she was right there, he does owe her an explanation. Sam and Natasha of course know most things about Bucky and what has happened since Insight, but the rest of the team knows much less, and what they know varies from person to person.

“Who was it yesterday? I knew it wasn’t anyone in our team, but I also knew you were absolutely sure when you said we were safe.”

“I was. It was my friend Bucky. It’s kind of a complicated story,” Steve pauses, thoughtful, “Actually, it would be easier if you just looked, instead of me telling you.” The offer is a spur of a moment thing, but it feels right to him. Now that he thinks of it, he believes she will understand and relate to a lot of what he’s gone through, and it will help her understand him in general as well.

“We decided I shouldn’t do that, you know,” she reminds him.

“Without permission, yes. But you have my permission now, just don’t dig too deep, I’ll show you. I should warn you though, it’s pretty tough stuff.”

“Yeah, I’ve handled some tough stuff myself.”

Steve smiles and acknowledges, “So you have, but I’m still warning, this is the sort of thing that cuts deep.”

Wanda is fully serious when she nods and then visibly concentrates. Steve opens his mind and thinks about Bucky, about the things that are relevant to her anyway. He can feel her in his mind but this time it doesn’t hurt; it’s feather light, almost a caress, when she moves through the memories. There are flashes from their childhood, from before the war, from battles. The brief stab of pain that comes with the train and then the hope and horror when he saw Bucky again. Everything after. It doesn’t take long and for a moment afterwards she looks stunned, clearly trying to absorb it all.

“I can see now why you knew we were safe. Was he always that good with a rifle?”

“No. He was very good, but now with the enhancements he is better.”

“You don’t want him fighting again.” It’s not a surprise she lands to that conclusion, since the topic is on the top of his mind.

“It’s, well, true I guess, but it’s more complicated than that. And besides, it doesn’t actually matter what I want. He is the one that has to make the decision.”

“But maybe it matters to him what you want,” she observes, and it hits right into what the conflict is for him.

“I know. And that is more than a little bit scary,” Steve admits.

“They told us about him, you know. Strucker. Not about his connection to you, I’m not even sure if he knew about it. Probably not actually. They told us about his abilities since he’d gone missing. And they told us about all of you, the Avengers. Now I see they didn’t get it quite right with you, about what were triggers for you and that sort of thing. But I guess it’s not something anyone knew.”

“No, it really isn’t accurate in the history books. They say Bucky and I were best friends, which obviously means we were close, but it’s not enough at all. We were so much more than that. Always. But if you’re talking about the vision, it was effective, even if not in a way you intended. It’s true that I do have regrets that I missed the rest of the life I would have had if I hadn’t crashed the plane. But now, if someone gave me a way back, I wouldn’t go.”

“Because you’re not sure you would find him.”

“Yes. This is my life now, and in the vision, it hurt because I knew it was something I’d missed, but it also scared me to be back there, because the most important thing to me was here and now. In this world.” Steve quiets, and then continues, “By the way, if you ever meet him, you should be very careful about your abilities. He wouldn’t react well at any kind of probing to his mind. And then the consequences of what would happen would be ugly regardless of the outcome.”

“I understand. Seems to me that he’s had enough people mess with his head already, I won’t be one more unless he asks me himself.”

“Thank you.”

“And I’m glad you have a second chance, even if it is like this.”

“Yeah, me too. Sometimes I feel guilty about it, but I am glad that since he is here and now, he decided to come back to me. I know that second chances like this can be both a blessing and a curse, so I’ll try and make it more of the first.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky comes out  of his room after Steve leaves for work. He takes a shower, digs the closet for clean clothes, eats breakfast. Steve brought muffins from his run. They are all normal things, things that people do and that he has learned to also do since living with Steve. Now though, it’s a morning unlike any other. He remembers they used to argue with Steve over all kinds of things before the war and also during the war. The latter arguments were much the same as the one they had the day before; about Steve being too reckless and Bucky trying to make sure he’d be fine.

Similar and yet different, because now he has trouble understanding what Steve wants. He remembers that during the war Steve had wanted him there, been happy that he was there. And he knows, even though Steve never says it, that Steve misses how things were before, misses how Bucky was before. And it’s not difficult to admit to himself it makes sense, who wouldn’t want things back to the way they were, when Bucky was still himself and not someone trying to be like a person again. And yet, now that he did something that was like before, Steve didn’t want that either. It confuses him. As does the fact he knows he can decide things for himself, and yet, there is a part of him that can’t help heeding Steve’s will. He isn’t sure if it is because of what Steve is, what he is to Bucky, or if it is that Steve and Pierce are partly tangled together in his head (and that is something that he would cut away if he could), and there have been just so many years when whatever Pierce said was law.

It’s a train of thought he doesn’t want to follow, so he goes to find something to do. He soon gives up on on reading and watching tv, and for a while he just paces to and fro in the living room while Hecate follows his process from the back of Steve’s chair. He refills her bowls, waters the flowers and herbs that live on the windowsill and resumes pacing. He eats precisely at noon, even though he’s not hungry and doesn’t really taste what he eats anyway.

In the afternoon he throws the linens into the washing machine, still feeling jittery. While getting new ones from the closet he notices a cardboard box on the top shelf. He’s seen it there before, but it didn’t matter then. Now it’s maybe curiosity, maybe the need to keep doing something, and he takes it down to see what is in it. There’s no reason he shouldn’t; when he first came Steve said he can look through everything in the apartment.

He takes the box back into his room, and Hecate slips in before he closes the door. The contents are a surprise when he opens it, some of them familiar. All of it is old, from the war, and he figures out soon it’s his and Steve’s things, all gathered in one place. Probably everything that survives, clothes and personal items. It seems Steve hasn’t removed anything.

He rifles through his things first, everything strangely familiar and odd at the same time. Only thing he takes out is a book, _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_. Now that it is in his hand, he remembers Steve gave it to him, and he also remembers he wrote a letter that he never sent, and kept it inside the book. Now the letter is gone, and he wonders if it was Steve who found it, or someone else. There is a strip of paper inside the last third of the book, and it’s definitely new. Looks like it’s been used as a bookmark.

He sets the book on his bedside table and then looks through Steve’s things. They are familiar, even if less so compared to his own things, and not much is of interest, until he comes to the very bottom of the box and finds several pencils and two books. When he opens one he sees drawings, and suddenly there is a whole array of memories of Steve drawing and painting. On every available strip of paper, any chance he got. He had remembered Steve drawing, had even wondered why he didn’t any more, but now the memories are actually meaningful. As is the question, why does Steve not draw anymore, when it used to be so ingrained to him.

He takes the sketch books with him to his bed and flips through them. They are Steve’s wartime books, and the subject matter reflects that. Some of the drawings are familiar, others completely new to him. He suddenly remembers that there had been a change. Before the war, especially when they lived together, he’d seen everything Steve drew, but in the war it had been different. For a while after his rescue in Austria he’d kept a bit of a distance to Steve, and even when they’d grown close again, when it was a bit easier to accept the changes that had happened to both of them, he hadn’t quite gotten back into the habit of leafing through Steve’s sketchbooks. He remembers feeling that there were things in Steve’s life that didn’t belong to him anymore. He also remembers he didn’t like the thought at all.

The first book starts at basic: there are sketches of men he doesn’t recognise, of weapons and equipment. In between there are cityscapes that he remembers from their old neighborhood, clearly drawn from memory. There’s a silhouette of him, sitting and smoking at a window, and a page of details, hands, jawline, curve of a shoulder, that he also thinks are him. And there is a sketch of a shape of a woman, Bucky thinks it’s meant to be Carter. There are no details to make her recognisable, almost as if Steve had felt he had no right to draw her.

Moving forward, there are scenes from the USO tour, many of them of the dancing girls but not of them performing. They are portrayed waiting, dozing off in a train, laughing in a group. More takes on Carter, more recognisable now. No more New York. There’s an almost empty page, with just a few lines, as if Steve had been interrupted and the drawing never finished, but nothing else was drawn on the page either. And then there’s the performing monkey, he remembers Steve showing that to him.

On the next page is a drawing that is more than just a sketch even if it’s done with pencil only. It’s carefully detailed and shaded, and there’s a date in the corner. After thinking a bit Bucky realises Steve must have drawn it while they were on the way to London after they returned from Austria. He stares at the picture, likeness of his own face, and the expression is something he recognises. Photos of him from the forties don’t look familiar most of the time; they feel like it’s someone else entirely in them, but here on the page it’s him. Captured by Steve in 1943, and he doesn’t feel that different from it now. The rest of the book is blank.

The second book has all kinds of sketches from the war. There are all of their team-mates, more of Bucky himself. He flips through the pages, pausing sometimes to look at a detail until he comes to one that is finally a full likeness of Peggy Carter. It’s not quite as finished as the one of him in the other book, but more carefully done than most drawings. He lays the book on the bed and just looks at the picture. He’s seen photos and films of her, but Steve has caught here something that he remembers she had, the kind of life that is hard catch into a photograph.

He’s been avoiding thinking about Peggy Carter, even though it regularly crosses his life since Steve religiously visits her. Bucky still isn’t quite sure if he actually liked her; there is something that he recognises as resentment, although he also remembers respecting her. Looking at the picture, he remembers reading she was a major part of Project Rebirth, and maybe that was the source of resentment. One thing Bucky fully remembers from the war is he had a hard time adjusting to Steve’s new form, and just Steve being there at all. That is something that has changed, now he is grateful, truly, that Steve is here. Even if he does also feel guilty for it.

 

* * *

 

Steve comes home and it’s quiet, not even Hecate comes to say hello. The kitchen is spotless and he notices the towels are changed. Looking into dishwasher, he notes that Bucky must have eaten, which he takes as a good sign. The living room is just as he left it, except there is a book open on the coffee table. It’s East of Eden, which he had left on the table months earlier, and hadn’t noticed disappearing until now that it is on the table again. There is a pencil mark next to one passage.

_ In all history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst sin we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, ‘Use it well, use it wisely.’ _

He reads the passage three times, and isn’t sure who it is meant for, is it about him or Bucky. Probably applies to both of them really. He leaves the book as he found it and goes to Bucky’s door. This time he knocks without hesitation.

“Bucky? Can I come in?”

After only a second, “Yeah, I’m here.”

When he opens the door Steve realises this is actually the first time he’s been in the room since Bucky came to live with him. He’s seen inside when Bucky has left the door open, but hasn’t actually stepped in. Bucky is sitting on his bed, and Hecate is behind his back lying on the pillow. She makes the kind of _mrrt_ sound she has for greeting Steve and then rolls onto her side and closes her eyes.

On the way home Steve thought about all the things he should say, things he needs to say, but none of them come out, because he recognises the books Bucky has in front of him. They are his old sketchbooks from the war, and the box they were stored in is on the floor (he vaguely thinks he should have offered Bucky his things from the box before). Bucky pulls them a bit closer to himself, clearly indicating Steve can sit at the foot of the bed. Steve goes.

Steve hasn’t actually looked inside the books since the war, but he still knows at a glance that Bucky has both of them open on the page of the last drawing. The first one is the carefully drawn portrait of Bucky, perhaps one that is the most finished out of anything Steve ever drew of him. He remembers drawing Bucky a lot, but they were often just quick likenesses, or studies on details, not actual portraits. He’d always felt that drawing Bucky was somehow intimate, crossing some boundaries he wasn’t ready to cross (and when it didn’t matter any more, when he actually knew the reason, he also didn’t have a chance to draw that much anymore). But that one time he had just been so relieved to have Bucky back after being sure of having lost him, that for a moment he hadn’t thought about it, just sat in the corner of his cabin on the ship bound for London and drawn.

The other book is open to a rough sketch that makes his heart hammer in his chest, because it’s the commandos and the backdrop is a snowy ravine. They’d had to wait a long time on the side of the mountain, and at one point, bored, Steve had broken out his pencil and book. It had been too cold to draw, really.

Bucky touches the corner of the page and says, “I don’t remember this.”

Steve takes a deep breath and is actually surprised when his voice is steady, “It was when we were going to get Zola.”

“Ah.” Bucky hesitates, “I don’t have memories of that, nothing very close to…”

Bucky can’t seem to know how to articulate his thought, but Steve doesn’t need him to. “I figured that was the case, from the trauma.”

“There is nothing but trauma in my head,” Bucky says, but it’s not heated at all, there’s even a thread of dark amusement in it, and Steve decides to take it as is.

“Yeah well. But I wanted to apologise for yesterday. I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

“It wasn’t true? Because it felt like it was.”

“It was, yes, but it wasn’t, I don’t know, very thoughtful? If I had actually thought about it I wouldn’t have said it because I would have remembered it doesn’t really matter what I wanted, only what you do.”

Bucky’s shoulders slump a bit, and Steve aches to just pull him close, to wrap him in his arms. “I wish it was so simple,” Bucky says.

“Me too. I should explain though. Where it came from yesterday was that I actually realised quite late, too late really, during the war that you actually didn’t really want to fight.”

Bucky frowns a bit, “That, I don’t know, I remember that I chose it, decided going back home wasn’t something I would do.”

“I know you did. But you didn’t stay because you wanted to fight, you stayed because I asked. I know you also felt it was a war that needed to be won, but after Austria, you already had done your part. I know part of you wanted no part in it, but you stayed because I asked you to. Back then I couldn’t imagine going without you. And now, this time I guess I thought you’d done your part, and shouldn’t have to go back.”

“So you didn’t ask.”

“No, and I won’t. But I forgot that I shouldn’t tell you not to either. I thought back to what you wanted then, and forgot that it doesn’t really matter anymore. Only what you want to do now matters. I forgot it could be different things, and I really shouldn’t have, because it’s the same with me. What I want now isn’t the same as it was in the war, or before the war. So whatever it is, I’ll do my best to support you,” Steve finishes.

“I’m not really sure of what I want,” Bucky says and closes the sketchbooks, drops them on the floor. There’s nothing between the two of them now.

“It’s okay, you have time to figure it out.”

Bucky grips his left wrist with his right hand, hard, and is quiet for a bit. Then he asks, “Do you ever want to go back? Would you like to go and just change what happened?”

“Only if I could stop this from ever happening to you. But I can’t go back, so I don’t think about it. We’ll make this work with what we have, we always did.” Steve notices Bucky shake his head minutely. “Bucky, will you look at me.”

Steve hesitates but then extends his hand and touches Bucky on his upper arm. Bucky flinches at the contact and Steve starts to pull his hand away, except Bucky catches it and says, “It’s fine, sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Steve says and shifts so that he sits a bit closer. He grips Bucky’s hand a bit tighter and lifts his other to his shoulder, cups behind his neck. This time Bucky doesn’t flinch and finally looks Steve into eyes. “I can’t change anything that happened in the past, but I want to try and make the future the best we can. And right now I wouldn’t want to be anywhere but here, with you, okay?”

Bucky looks at him for several long seconds. “Yeah okay,” he says and then shifts closer, leans his forehead to Steve’s.

It’s such a simple movement, but it feels like every nerve ending in Steve’s body is set alight. And for the first time he really manages to believe, like he’s been telling to himself as well as everyone else, that they will be okay. Somehow. And he remembers something else he needs to say.

“Yesterday you said that  what they made you is all that you are, but it’s not true. You are so much more.”

“How do you know?” Bucky asks, and he sounds tired.

“I know because you saved my life. Because you came back and because I see every day you fight hard to regain yourself. I know because of this right here.”

They stay leaning to each other for a long time, and in all honesty Steve never really wants to move again. It’s not like they haven’t touched at all, but up until now it’s always been for purpose. Not like this, not just touching for the sake of being close to someone. And it feels like Steve is finally at home. He knew he’d missed it, but hadn’t realised how much.

After a while Bucky starts to shake, so faintly it’s almost undetectable, but his grip on Steve’s hand becomes tighter. Steve doesn’t say anything and just stays where he is, waits for it to pass. He’s not sure what time it is when he can no longer feel the tremors and Bucky’s breathing is back to normal, but he thinks he probably should think about getting them something to eat. He just really doesn’t want to move.

The calm is broken by a sound of engines outside, first something that sounds like a high-powered sports car and then two others. Squealing tires and slamming of doors, and when he hears someone call out _Mr Stark_ , Steve decides he should see what’s going on.

Indeed there is Tony, standing next to his Ferrari, and there’s Happy and three other members of his security that clearly came in the SUVs after Tony, who is now arguing that he doesn’t need them, he can handle this on his own and that Pepper worries too much. There’s an uneasy feeling in Steve’s stomach, because if Pepper thinks Tony would need backup when coming to talk to Steve, then it must be something bad. And he has a pretty good idea what it might be. Bucky, who’s come to stand behind his shoulder, has come to the same conclusion.

“He knows.”

“Seems that way. I’ll go see what he wants, you stay here.”

Bucky hesitates for a moment. “Yeah that’s probably for the best today.”

Steve shrugs his coat on and goes down. Tony sees him as soon as he comes through the door, and his security guards are visibly on the edge.

“Rogers. Your _friend_ didn’t feel like showing up, did he?”

The way Tony emphasises the word friend is a clear tell that they’d guessed the purpose of the visit right, but he ignores the tone and says mildly, “Not a good day for that Tony.”

“Yeah, bad days probably are risky around here.”

Steve’s temper flares at that, but he steps on it, because losing it wouldn’t be good right now, and he’s determined to not make any more mistakes this week due to it. “No they aren’t, because he works very hard to make sure of it. But I don’t think this is something we want to discuss on the street.”

“Going to invite us in then?”

“No, and I doubt you’d come anyway. Happy can drive us around for a bit.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky watches Steve get in the car with Stark and it driving away. The other cars follow it, one of Stark’s security guards drives the Ferrari. It feels like he’s hiding behind Steve’s back and he doesn’t like it at all, but it’s true now isn’t a good time to get into any kind of confrontation. His nerves are too close to the surface, the battle instincts honed by training and torture too sharp for him to be safe if stressed.

He shifts his shoulder, trying to work out how bad the knots in his muscles are. He never used to notice how the imbalance created by the heavy prosthetic strains him, but now he does. It came little by little, living with Steve, when he started to get used to comfortable things in general. Clean clothes. Regular showers and baths. Warmth. Food that’s more than just fuel to keep him going. With accepting comfort came also the consciousness of discomfort, and sometimes, on days when he just aches he wishes he didn’t notice it, but it would mean going back, and he doesn’t want to do that.

For months now he’s lived here with Steve, and he knows it all hangs on a balance now. Everything changes if Stark decides to give him to the authorities. He has no illusions of what would be the most likely outcome, not when he is such a perfect scapegoat to neatly wrap up HYDRA. What he doesn’t know is what Steve would do, and that’s the part that scares him. He isn’t too concerned of what happens to himself, part of him even knows he’d deserve it. Just as another part of him knows, same as Steve always tells him, that it wasn’t his fault, not his responsibility. It’s weird to know two opposing things so clearly, but he does. And he suspects Steve would fight for him, is afraid Steve would fight for him even if it put him against everyone else he knows. Bucky doesn’t want that.

It’s been a day of ups and downs; a strange morning, restless day, reflecting over Steve’s drawings in the afternoon. Then Steve had come home and it had been a release, to hear the apology, the reasoning, the reassurance. It had hurt too, but not the same way his memories and guilt do. It was as if something, some part of him he hadn’t used in a long time had suddenly come alive. Like blood rushing into a limb you’ve slept on, it hurts but afterwards it’s much better. He had wanted for that moment to last forever, but it didn’t. Of course it didn’t, the world wasn’t that kind to him.

It’s been only ten minutes since Steve left (and he knows because he’s counted every second), when a pebble hits the living room window. Looking down he sees Natasha Romanoff (Romanova, his brain supplies automatically), looking as nondescript as she can in a black coat and scarf. As soon as she knows he’s seen her, she climbs up to the balcony. It only takes her seconds. He debates on whether to let her in, but she’s already there, and he has a feeling that she isn’t going to antagonize him in a way that would lead to a bad reaction.

He clicks the lock open and lets her open the door for herself. She moves slower than she usually does, with deliberate, predictable movements, and he is grateful for that. He knows his instinct that she would understand was right.

“Steve texted me about Tony, thought you might want some company,” she explains her presence.

He considers it, and realises it is actually true. It hadn’t been a conscious want, except for regret that the moment with Steve had been broken, but he realises it helps to have her there. He turns towards the kitchen. “Do you want some coffee?”

“No, but I think Steve has some tea in there for me. I can make it myself.” She sheds her coat and comes to kitchen after him.

Soon they are back in living room with their hot mugs and they settle down, Bucky on the couch, Natasha in the armchair that Steve usually doesn’t sit in. While they made their drinks, she settled on calling him James. She had remarked that calling him Bucky like Steve didn’t feel quite right, and just as well, because he hadn’t liked the idea either.

They are quiet for a while, and then she says, “I actually came to make sure you remembered that whatever Stark’s blaming you for…”

“I think we know exactly what it is,” Bucky interjects.

“Yes, well, anyway. I came to remind it’s not your fault.”

“I know that.”

“Yeah, and yet you don’t. I get it, it’s the same for me. I did a lot of things, terrible things, and even if I wasn’t technically responsible since I had no choice, it was still my hands in the blood. I still felt responsible.”

“And it’s not something that’s easy to get rid of,” Bucky admits. She has hit the bullseye at first attempt.

“No, maybe even impossible. I don’t know. But I decided what I wanted to do to, I guess to make amends, even if I can’t, really. Maybe make it more of an even score. You’ll have to find that for yourself.”

“Yeah, that’s the tricky bit, knowing what is the right way to go.”

“It is,” she agrees, “but remember that you have help, as I did. I know Steve will not give up on you now that he’s found you.”

“I know that. It’s the scary part. I don’t know how far he will take it.”

“I know. That’s why I had hard time accepting help at first when I defected. But those who care about us really don’t give us a choice, and it’s okay, because if it was the other way around, we’d do exactly the same.”

Bucky nods, distracted. “I just, I’ve already cost him so much, I can see it in him every day, and I don’t know if it’ll ever get better.”

“How do you mean?” For the first time she seems to not quite understand.

“I know my memory is in pieces, but it’s most of it still there, somewhere. And I remember how he was in the war, when we encountered terrible things, had to do terrible things. He never looked like he does now, as tired and worried. Worn down.”

“And you think it’s because of you.”

“What else would it be?”

She looks at him steadily for a few seconds and then suddenly smiles, gets her phone, and looks something in it before handing it to Bucky. It’s a photo of Steve, except he seems more tired than Bucky’s seen. She motions for him to continue, and there are more, and in all of them Steve seems defeated, uninterested or sad. It hurts him to see it.

Natasha takes her phone back and says, “That’s how he was after waking up but before Insight. I had a hard time deciding how worried over him I should be because I had no reference, but I knew he wasn’t right. Trust me, he is much happier right now. And I know it’s not perfect, but recovery isn’t something that happens overnight, as you well know. Now I can tell it was bad for him after he woke up, worse than I realised. But he is getting better, and most of it is because of you. So if you have to worry about things, pick something else. You’re not bad for him.”

She smiles at him again, and Bucky doesn’t know what to say. Suddenly he remembers that he shot her, in two occasions actually, and here she is, making sure he’s okay. He feels like he should apologise, but the words get stuck in his throat.

“But, since you remember,” she continues, “tell me what he was like. Before.”

The question makes him wary, he isn’t even sure why. He taps the tags to his chin, trying to figure out her angle, and it’s only then he notices he’s taken them out of his pocket in the first place and slips them back. He’s not wearing them, he doesn’t like the feeling of metal at his neck, but they are always with him.

“I’m not sure we have that kind of time,” he replies and is satisfied he manages to make it sound light.

“I’m not asking everything, just, I guess something that his friend would tell me about him, instead of all the official reports. He’s my friend too, you know, but I still feel like I don’t really know him.” She seems sad at the admission.

“He wanted to be an artist,” Bucky tells her.

“I knew he used to draw,” she starts but Bucky cuts her short.

“Not like that, I know what the books say, that it was something to pass the time. It wasn’t. It was what he wanted to do, it was the thing that burned him, something he had to do. That’s why I helped him to go to the art school as much as I could. I remember… I wanted him to have that, when there was so much that he couldn’t have, I wanted to help him achieve what he wanted most. That’s the thing that’s clearest to me, from before. And then the war came.”

“And he found something else that burned him.” Natasha guesses.

“Yeah, but it’s not the same. It’s partly him, the sense of duty and what not, but it’s also external expectations, effect to a cause. And the art was all him, born inside him, spontaneous. And it was a release, peace. The war and what he does now is anything but. And now, I don’t know, I don’t know if he has that way of finding peace anymore.”

Natasha is quiet, thinking, and then she says, “I think we, SHIELD and everyone else, are to blame for it. At least somewhat. We all knew so much about him, there are books and classified reports, all of that, and maybe we forgot that it wasn’t all of him. And I’ve seen it many times, it’s easy to become what other people expect of you, and lose yourself in the process. But I also believe you can find yourself again.”

It is an encouraging thought.

 

* * *

 

It goes exactly as predicted. And on the other hand not really.

They’ve been driven around in silence for almost ten minutes before Tony says, “You know your friend killed my parents.” More of a statement than question.

All Steve feels is tired. “HYDRA killed your parents, Tony.”

“Still it was he who ultimately did it, and should be held accountable. For all that you talk about doing the right thing, when it gets personal, you’re harboring a criminal.”

“You’re right, it is personal, but are you suggesting you’re coming from a completely objective angle to this?”

“I’m saying there are courts and trial, justice…”

At that, the anger flares. “And what he would get wouldn’t be justice. You should know that. It would be a perfect chance to have a scapegoat, to sweep everything under a rug and say the problem with HYDRA is solved. Forget all about it. It wouldn’t be justice, not when the scales would be so much against him.” Steve notices Happy looking a little bit alarmed in the mirror, so he lowers his voice. “And what you said about accountability, well, he _is_ being held accountable every damn day. For something that he was made to do, and for everything that was done to him. Do you know what it’s like to watch someone fight day after day to try and regain themselves, after decades of being torn apart, having everything taken away. Just because he was unlucky enough to be imprisoned, unlucky enough to not die because of their experiments.”

Tony just looks at him, clearly at loss for words for the first time since Steve met him.

“Also,” Steve continues, “If you want to talk about impartial justice, why is it only now that you want him on trial? You knew before who he was. And if he should be on trial, then why just him? Why not Nat? Or Clint or Bruce? They’ve all killed people while arguably in a state where they cannot be held accountable. Why not us, you and me? Not like all of the Avengers things were sanctioned by state or the World Security Council. Neither were some of the things we had to do in the war. Nor was your killer AI. So if you are going to set the police or whoever on Bucky, at least know why you’re doing it.” He’s tired and angry, and he knows it’s not a good combination, not if Tony decides to antagonize him over this. “Happy, stop the car please.”

Steve declines wanting a ride back home, but before walking away he says, “If you are going to set the justice system on us, please let me know instead of causing a tactical team sent to my place to apprehend him.”

“Why, so you can run away?” Tony asks, and Steve is grateful he’s already out of the car.

“No, we won’t do that. I will fight for him, but within the law if it comes to that. Maybe hire those guys who were part of putting Fisk away last spring. Go on a campaign on social media. Whatever I need to. But I’d just like to avoid a situation where something bad happens because of the instincts and automatic responses he was given against his will. He doesn’t need anything more to regret over that.” With that, last bit of anger leaves, and Steve is even more tired, but he also thinks Tony understands, because he nods before they part ways.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking longer than usual between chapters, work has been kicking my butt and I strayed into writing [seventeen days](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5032939), which is a prequel to this, featuring the box Bucky finds in this one and Steve doing not so well. At least this is a long chapter after a long wait.


	6. a room

Steve wakes up, slow and sluggish. It’s already light outside, which means he slept much later than he usually does. At least it’s Saturday, and no one expects him at the HQ. Getting out of bed he notices his muscles are stiff and complaining, which is unusual for him these days. It’s almost as if he’s taken back in time, to the years before the war when waking up and feeling all kinds of aches was just another day. He rises his hands up and stretches as tall as he can reach, and then opens the curtains fully to let the light in. Not that there is much light; it’s an absolutely miserable looking rainy November day.

After parting with Tony he hadn’t come straight home. Instead he had walked around, not really thinking about anything. Or at least trying to not let himself think about all the possible futures that tried to pop into his head. All of them miserable, leaving him frustrated. He didn’t want to come home like that, and it had been almost midnight before he returned. There had been just a hint of perfume in the air, the one he knew Natasha used outside of work, and a teapot on the counter, two mugs in the sink. He’d sent her a quick text as thanks for keeping Bucky company, and gotten only a smiling emoji as reply. Bucky had been in his room, but the door was open and Steve saw him reading on his bed. The only thing they’d said was exchange good night.

He wakes up a bit more, notices the scent of coffee drifting in the air, and goes to kitchen without bothering to change out of the t-shirt and sweatpants he slept in. Bucky is in the kitchen, crouched in one of the chairs as he does sometimes to keep his feet off the floor. For some reason he doesn’t like to wear socks if he’s not wearing shoes. He’s reading a book, and only when Steve has already turned away to fill his coffee cup, his brain identifies it as the copy of _Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ from the box.

“Do you remember reading it?” Steve asks after he has his coffee as he likes it, and settles with his hip against the counter.

“Yeah, I remember. I read it several times actually, during the war. It helped to get away. But it’s different now. Or I’m different. It’s just that different parts stand out now.”

“I’ve noticed that happening too. I’m almost scared to read some of my old favorites, in case I don’t like them any more.”

“Did you ever read this?”

“I did, but only after I woke up here. They had just stashed our things in the box and kept it untouched over the years. They gave it to me after I moved from SHIELD headquarters to one of their apartments. I started reading it the day after we fought the Chitauri.”

“That’s some contrast,” Bucky says and Steve could swear he’s almost smiling. He hasn’t seen Bucky smile since 1945.

“It was, but it helped me get a little bit grounded here. When I moved to DC I put it back into the box, and then just never really thought about what to do with all of it,” Steve shrugs and then changes topic, since he suddenly realises he’s ravenous. “Did you eat yet?”

At the negative from Bucky he gets out toast, eggs and bacon and starts on an omelette. Bucky leaves the book on the table and cuts up some mushroom and tomatoes, and then grates the cheese. They work mostly in silence, but it’s not an awkward or heavy silence. It reminds Steve of the mornings before the war when they lived together and used to work around each other half-awake while getting ready for the day. While they eat Steve looks through the news items on his tablet, and they talk about the current topics; the bloated political process and sports.

After breakfast and finally getting dressed they take fresh cups of coffee to the living room, and Steve debates only a moment before saying, “Do you remember us going to see the Disney movies? Snow White, Pinocchio and the rest?”

“Yeah, sort of, why?”

“Now there are a lot more, I don’t even know, at least fifty.”

“I see the guy kept busy.” Bucky sounds genuinely impressed.

“Well, they kept making them after he died, still do.”

“Yeah, now that I think about it I’ve seen ads. Seems like a pretty big deal. Are they still good or did they just seem like it back then?”

“I wouldn’t know, haven’t seen any,” Steve says and now he looks straight at Bucky, who is obviously confused.

“I thought Romanova made you watch movies with her.”

“She did, but I refused to watch those. Didn’t feel right.”

Bucky stares at him, clearly realising Steve is going for something with the discussion. “Why? I thought…” He stops short when a memory clearly click in place, and then shakes his head and actually smiles. “You are a sentimental idiot, you know that right?”

Steve, feeling like he’s about to burst with joy, grins back. “I’m okay with you thinking that.”

“Really though, we decided back then that we’d always watch them together, and then you get here and refuse to watch any of them because I’m not around?” Bucky sounds incredulous, but Steve thinks he detects a hint of pleased in him. Or maybe it’s just his wishful imagination.

“Yes.”

“Sentimental idiot.”

“You said that already, your insult game is a little rusty. Are we watching a movie or not?”

“I guess we are, I’ll never hear the end of it otherwise.”

Bucky makes a great show of reluctance, but Steve knows it’s exactly that, a show. He feels like the Grinch in that movie they watched the previous Christmas with Natasha, his heart suddenly three sizes bigger. It’s not like their exchanges before the war, not quite, but how it feels is familiar, the easy flow of it.

“Did you want to see them in order or should we watch the good ones first?” Steve asks.

“Please, my head may be a Swiss cheese but I know your sensibilities will rebel at anything but chronological order, whatever you might say. Also how would we even know which ones are supposed to be the good ones? But I want to watch the old ones again, to see if they are anything like I remember,” Bucky replies and settles deeper into the couch.

Steve puts on _Snow White_ , and instead of his usual chair sits on the couch as well. They end up leaning their shoulders together, and it’s the best morning Steve has had since he woke up from the ice.

***

The movie is just finished when Steve notices Bucky shift, clearly listening. He has barely time to register that yes, there are steps outside their door before the doorbell rings just as Bucky says, “You should open it, it’s Romanova.”

Steve doesn’t bother questioning, he knows Bucky’s senses on this sort of thing are more accurate than his. Not necessarily because he hears or sees better, as far as he can tell they are pretty close to each other, but Bucky’s used to using his senses on surveillance a lot more. On top of it comes the hypervigilance that these days is part of Bucky’s everyday life. Steve on the other hand most of the time partially blocks his superhuman senses, because it’s exhausting to be aware of everything all the time.

Thus he isn’t at all surprised to see Bucky was right, it is Natasha behind the door. He is somewhat perplexed that she came, though, since she hasn’t really done that since Bucky came to stay with Steve. Before it she used to pop in and bring him little gifts or to just spend a little time with him or to drag him out to some new restaurant. Since Bucky appeared, she’s only been in his apartment twice he now realises; when she and Sam dropped him off after he was injured and the previous evening, when Steve hadn’t even seen her. Maybe it had changed things somewhat again.

This visit follows a familiar pattern; she hands him a paper bag and says, “Here, I got you something. I can’t stay, James will explain it.”

She’s gone almost before Steve manages to thank her, and returning to living room he asks Bucky, “Do you have any idea what that was about?”

“Maybe you should see what it is first.”

Steve looks into the bag and pauses before he takes out three sketchbooks, different sizes and with different kinds of paper, a set of pencils and another of markers in different sizes. He opens one of the books and runs his fingers over the paper as he always used to do with new ones.

“You don’t draw anymore,” Bucky says, and it’s almost a question.

“No. I guess, it just never came up. Sometimes I thought about it, but I never made it to an art store. I guess I lost the habit.”

“I remembered it was something that was missing, but I only realised yesterday, looking at the old books, what it meant. Because it used to be…” Bucky trails of in the middle of the thought and Steve feels his eyes sting.

“It used to be something that gave me peace,” Steve says, because it’s true, there’s no use in denying it.

“Maybe you should try again,” Bucky says, and before Steve has thought of a reply he announces, “I’m going for a walk.”

Steve recognises the tone, knows Bucky wants to take some time alone, and doesn’t offer to go with him. Sometimes the need to be alone stems from frustration or distress, but today it seems like it’s just something Bucky needs to do, maybe to think. Steve is left sitting in his chair where he’d fallen when he realised what was in the bag, and he doesn’t move before he hears Bucky close the door. Hecate appears from his room where she was napping, hops onto the armrest, then the back of the chair and settles there, leaning on Steve’s head.

He chooses the smallest book, because he likes the texture of the paper, smooth and heavy, and picks up one of the pencils, perfectly sharpened. At first he doesn’t know how to start, doesn’t quite remember how it was when it felt the pictures flowed from his pencil onto the paper. Maybe he’s lost it for good, maybe not. He won’t know until he tries. He draws the first line, and then another, lets his shoulders relax.

 

* * *

 

Weeks pass, and Bucky feels like he’s living in a limbo, just waiting for the inevitable. Ever since Stark’s visit he’s been bracing every time he hears the phone ring, or in general just waiting for the appearance of an attack team outside. At first it made his hypervigilance and paranoia worse, and he barely managed to sleep. But the days pass, weeks even, and nothing happens. Bit by bit time blunts the edge, as much as it ever does that for him. He’s still not sleeping as much as he should, by normal people standards, not even by supersoldier standards, but he makes do.

As he’s been waiting for the inevitable, he’s also become more aware of things he is at the risk of losing. He knows Steve isn’t one of them. Even if they were separated, it still wouldn’t mean losing Steve. It’s something he just knows, that Steve will walk to the ends of Earth for him if occasion calls for it. The knowledge scares him; it’s hard to know what to do with it, the kind of power, and his returning memories don’t really help. It’s harder to remember thoughts and feelings than things that actually happened, but he is fairly sure that Steve was just the same in the 40s. Only back then Bucky had no idea of how far Steve would go, even with the glaring evidence of Austria in front of him. His own blindness for it is a curious thing in retrospect.

It’s everything else in his life, things that surround Steve, that he is at the risk of losing. Things that people take for granted, but for him are both strange and precious. Finding new things he likes to eat. Going for a run in the morning just because he wants to. Taking a walk in the city, learning and relearning its character. Reading books. Actually being able to sleep, as bad as he still is at it.

Watching Disney movies with Steve, letting himself lean on Steve’s shoulder a bit more every time. Becoming more comfortable there.

All of these things make the thought of losing his freedom harder and harder every day. And yet he lets them happen, takes what he can. He thinks it’s the most human thing he’s done ever since falling from the train.

One crisp December afternoon, when there’s the smell of snow in the air, and Steve is humming (tunelessly, as he always has) in the kitchen while making hot chocolate, Bucky remembers a word he hasn’t thought about in a very long time, not in connection to himself.

Home.

He thinks this is it, right here. And it’s not a place even though he knows he’ll come to associate it with Steve’s apartment if he has the chance. If it was empty rooms, it wouldn’t be one, he now understands, or maybe remembers. It’s the smell in the air, the comfortable chairs, the plants on the window, the cat (wherever she has gone to sleep this time). Little marshmallows in the cup of chocolate. And most importantly, Steve smiling and lightly touching his elbow while handing him the cup.

It’s that he manages to not flinch at the touch.

***

He watches as Steve gets back to drawing again, and the process seems strangely familiar. It takes him a while before he realises it’s similar to him learning to be a person, just in a much smaller scale, over one single thing instead of everything. It happens gradually, unevenly. Sometimes Steve fills page after page with sketches, sometimes it’s just one drawing but it gets finished carefully. Sometimes it’s just halfhearted shapes, and on those days Steve often ends up throwing his book and pencils onto the table in frustration. And then he picks them back up, turns a page and tries again, because Steve is stubborn as ever.

Bucky looks through all the drawings, but only when Steve isn’t there to see him do it. Steve indicated he could, and he always leaves the book open at the last page for him to see. The range of subjects is pretty much similar as it always was; scenes from the city, landscapes (Bucky thinks some of them Steve draws from memory from the wartime), still lives from inside their apartment, countless ones of Hecate, the Avengers and other people he clearly knows. Even a few of the commandos, and of Carter, both as she was in the war and the way she is now. And Bucky himself, mostly in similar fast sketches as in Steve’s old books. They are all of him as he is now, not old ones from memory, from war or before it. It makes him relieved every time he realises it.

He always leaves the book closed when he finishes looking through it.

Sometimes Steve talks about what he is drawing, almost idly, perhaps to fill the silence, or to vent frustration, or to try and figure out how to portray something he sees. Bucky has taken to lying on the couch while Steve does this. It’s surprisingly comfortable, and lying down helps with his over exerted back and shoulder muscles. He doesn’t think about much when he’s there, just lets Steve’s voice wash over him. It’s soothing, and it’s one of those rare things that manage to quiet his mind, to stop it from racing to find the next horrible thing from inside him.

One time Steve doesn’t quite manage to get the likeness he wants, and mentions something about wanting stronger lines before going to make dinner. The next day Bucky spends a good few hours on Google, looking for information on art supplies, and ends up ordering a set of charcoals, paper that’s suitable for them and fixative. The thing he definitely likes about the future is he doesn’t have to go outside to get things.

When they arrive he leaves them on the coffee table and Steve finding them causes one of those brilliant smiles of his, and it’s familiar; Bucky remembers another set of charcoals, pencils, paints bought as a gift. He’s not quite sure if it can be considered a gift since it’s actually Steve’s money, but Steve says it’s the thought that counts. “It’s not like I managed to buy them for myself, remember.” Bucky squirms at the sentimentality of it all, and feels warm all over. Steve breaks the charcoals in by doing a set of studies on Hecate, her glossy black fur coming alive on the page.

***

It’s the night after New Year’s Day, and he can’t sleep. Hence he does what he always does, paces back and forth in the hallway. He’s tired since he barely slept the previous night. He and Steve both. They’d kept the lights on, closed the curtains, put the tv on loud. It wasn’t really enough to drown out the noises, and he noticed Steve occasionally flinch when there was a sudden louder bang. Bucky had felt like taking cover at every sudden noise, and finally had resolved settling himself in the corner to wait it all out. He had felt weak and ashamed about it, not being able to handle people celebrating.

Steve had brought them both hot chocolate and then sat down on the floor with him, and they had waited, tv turned on to cartoons that neither one of them watched. They’d only gone to sleep after three in the morning, and had been up before seven as they usually did. Running had helped to shake off the night, but apparently it wasn’t enough to keep nightmares away from him now.

He pauses at Steve’s door and pushes it open a bit to see properly inside. Steve is sleeping on his side, facing the door. The curtains are open just a bit as they usually are, he’s not sure if it’s on purpose. Steve is breathing slow and shallow, deep in sleep.

He must have lost time, because he’s called back to the moment by Steve’s voice, low and hoarse from the sleep, “Can’t sleep? Was it a nightmare?”

Steve rises up to lean on his elbow, and Bucky says, “I’m fine, you should sleep.”

“So should you, last night was kind of short.”

Bucky looks back towards his room, and it doesn’t seem that welcoming, even if he is tired. Steve sits properly up and pulls the covers down at the other half of his bed, pats the mattress and says, “Come here?” He sounds like he’s still half asleep, and there are a million things Bucky could protest about, but he doesn’t. He goes.

Steve settles back down, this time facing Bucky, and closes his eyes again. Hecate hops on to the bed and settles in between them. It takes a while for the bed to fully warm up, and while he waits he remembers this is another familiar thing. They used to share a bed for many reasons. Sleepovers when they were young, for warmth in the winter when they lived together, as well as in the war. Only the beds used to be much smaller than the ones they have now.

Bucky wakes up when it’s just started to get light out. For a second he is confused; the ceiling is wrong, the walls are wrong. He’s already turning towards the presence on his side when he remembers the previous night, and finds Steve awake watching him. He’s lying on his side, with Hecate at the crook of his arm, clearly not in a hurry to go anywhere.

The words are out of Bucky’s mouth before he realises he’s speaking, “I’m not him.”

“Yes you are.” Steve sounds full of conviction. Bucky wants to swear.

“I don’t mean –,” he starts, frustrated, but doesn’t get very far.

“I _know_ what you mean,” Steve says, “but you’re actually wrong. You think you’re not you, because you’ve changed, but that’s not true. People change, it doesn’t mean they stop being themselves.”

“People don’t change as much as I have.”

“Not usually, no. But it doesn’t mean I’m wrong about it. I remember, after I found you in Austria you were different, and still you. And before that, I’d seen different versions of you, affected by happiness and hardship, and it was always still you. In every way that mattered. You still are.”

Bucky knows he looks skeptical and Steve continues, “And I’ve changed too. Back with Project Rebirth, I realised only afterwards how thoroughly it changed me. I looked different, but it wasn’t all. I felt different, I thought different, and it got so far that I wasn’t sure if it was still me. And I’ve never been so relieved when you recognized me there in Austria; because you were alive and there, but also because you knew me, and then it didn’t matter how much I’d changed. I was still me, wasn’t I?”

“Yes,” Bucky says, and it’s the only possible answer, Steve has always been Steve.

“Right, and after I woke up here seventy years later I was again different, and yet still me. And you are you. If you’re not sure, then take it from me, because I know. And it’s okay if you’re not the same as before.”

Steve smiles, and Bucky has to give in. “Yeah okay.”

 

* * *

 

It takes time, but after weeks of practicing Steve feels that his hand obeys him again. Drawing is very much not like riding a bike; the skill is easy to lose and regaining it takes time and effort, not to mention frustration, but it does come back. After a while he thinks he starts to see things the way he remembers seeing them before, the shapes and shadows making sense in a way that he can translate onto paper. He starts to instinctively know which paper, which pencil is the right one. The tools that make what he sees come alive on paper instead of him just tracing ghosts as it felt like at first.

The pencils are there first, then the set of charcoals that appear one day and make him smile provide a new dimension to his art. For a second it feels like no time has passed since the forties. Bucky sometimes seemed to know what he needed even when he himself didn’t realise it, even if Bucky’s understanding of art was completely second hand, from watching Steve work. It’s one of those days when Steve is so grateful it feels like it’s too much, not just for Bucky but for everything, just to have this little piece back that he almost hadn’t remembered himself.

Technically his memory had gotten a lot better with the serum, and he can recall more detail than most people believe is actually plausible, but it doesn’t mean he remembers everything. Especially things that are painful, things he has intentionally shut away.

After charcoals comes color, in pencils and then paint. When he finally touches a canvas with a brush it feels like he has finally come home after being lost for a long time. He doesn’t think, just lets the image flow onto the canvas, and it’s like he isn’t in control at all, but that he’s channeling something. Like art is on all the best days. And yet, the picture is all him, not something external. There is the sky, and the falling debris, all distorted through water, edges soft. There is a glint of metal just in the corner, a shadow of a hand reaching. When he’s finished he sits in front of the painting for a long time, just staring at it until the light is mostly gone, and then Bucky is there, standing behind his shoulder, clearly taking it in. He doesn’t say anything about it, but when they make dinner that night Bucky stands closer to Steve, sometimes brushing against him.

Steve does draw Bucky, much as he draws everything, but it’s still the same process it was before the war. There’s rarely a full likeness; usually it’s just detail studies, silhouettes, rough sketches. He shies away from pinning Bucky on the paper, and he knows exactly why.

He still feels like he’s walking on eggshells, but for all the different reasons. There is still the worry that he says or does something wrong, something to set Bucky back on his progress, but it’s no longer a constant thing in his mind. He’s starting to feel like he’s got the hang of things instead of almost panicking inside like he had when Bucky originally came back to him. He no longer fears that Bucky might leave, and realising he’s alone in the apartment when he wakes up isn’t a cause for alarm, it’s just a reminder that Bucky needs to get away sometimes. He always comes back, and Steve has learned to trust it.

What now causes him to hesitate and overthink is the budding closeness. Now that they have established that Bucky is okay with Steve touching him, he constantly struggles with how much is enough, how much is too much. Bucky is clearly both touch-starved and yet flinches at contact, and it’s hard to find the right balance. A hand on the arm, leaning on each other on the sofa, fingers brushing when handing things out. So far he seems to have succeeded in getting at least close to what Bucky can handle, but it’s always just a little bit of additional stress.

It makes things harder as well, makes it more difficult to not remember the past, to not remember all the ways they had touched. Makes it hard to not want things.

Because he does want things, wants a million things, and they are not on the table, and it’s okay he thinks. He already has more than he could have ever dared to dream of since that day in 1945. He has more than anyone could ask for, and if it’s all there ever is for him, he’ll take it and be grateful. Because he is grateful. Every day.

 

* * *

 

Slowly but surely it all comes back to him, fragment by fragment. Some memories are easier to reach than others; they come to him with barely an invitation. Others need to be dragged into light. Sometimes they are not at all what he expected. Sometimes they make his stomach turn. But he keeps looking, because sometimes they are beautiful.

He remembers what they did on July 4th 1936, Steve’s 18th birthday. It had been hot, even for July, and Steve hadn’t really felt that well. Hence they hadn’t really done that much that would count as special, most of the day they had sat on the fire escape that was conveniently in shade during the hottest hours. He doesn’t think they even talked that much, just whiled away the hours until it got dark and marginally cooler. They had hauled themselves up to the roof, because Steve was exactly that kind of stubborn to do it even on a day he didn’t feel well, and watched the fireworks over the river. He remembers the colors, and that they had leaned on each other’s shoulders. It’s harder to remember what he thought, how he felt. Those things are always less tangible, prone to change. He wonders sometimes if he really thought of Steve as he now remembers, or if he is mixing up their current reality with the memories.

He has a lot of memories of Steve, and in a lot of them he remembers them just casually touching. Leaning on each other, his arm slung around Steve’s shoulders, that sort of thing. Now they don’t do it as much. Steve is clearly more guarded than he used to be, and Bucky doesn’t blame him. It’s not like he is the friend Steve lost, whatever Steve keeps saying.

Sometimes he himself is the one shying from contact. It’s maddening to him, because he both wants to and doesn’t want to touch Steve at the same time. It’s like so many things in his life these days, full of contradictions. There is something centering, stabilising in physical contact with Steve, and yet sometimes he can’t bear it. It might be because for so long every time he was touched it meant something bad was happening or at least about to happen. Sometimes he has this fear (and he knows it’s irrational, thank you very much, but that’s how they often work) that everything he’s done is seeped deep into his skin and if they touch it gets on Steve and he can’t let that happen.

And then there is the thing that he hates more than anything related to his captivity, more than anything he has done. It’s the lingering shadow of Alexander Pierce in his head, still there, impossible to get rid of, because it feels like it’s tangled into so many things inside him.

Intellectually, he knows why it happened, and he knows it was a pure chance. Somehow, Pierce just happened to be recruited by HYDRA. Somehow he made it into the very small group that was aware of the Winter Soldier. And somehow he just happened to be the right age, happened to be close enough look alike to Steve that coupled with his lofty speeches of ideals he slotted right into the empty place in Bucky’s confused mind. And now he can’t be banished. His presence is all tangled up with that of Steve’s, even now that Steve is here and not just a fragment of memory. Pierce’s presence still lingers, and it sometimes makes it hard for Bucky to touch Steve on the difficult days when past is only behind a very sheer curtain. He doesn’t want them to get any more tangled, doesn’t want to risk a mix up. The consequences wouldn’t be good for anyone, as he knows perfectly well what he’d do if Pierce now came upon him. Sometimes he’s grateful Fury put the bullets through Pierce, sometimes he regrets it.

There are things that help though, and Steve drawing is one of those. It’s not about battle or war, it’s nothing to do with ideals. It’s just Steve, always the same since he was a scrawny little boy. On difficult days Bucky settles on the couch, watches the pencil move on the paper, lets the quiet scratching keep him in the moment.

***

It’s a bitterly cold and at the same time beautiful January day when Steve texts him about another Avengers mission. It is a different kind of message than the previous ones, he notices. It doesn’t automatically expect him to wait at home, but tells him they are going and where. He doesn’t think Steve expects him to appear either, just gives him a chance. Remembers he promised to try and not make decisions for Bucky.

He stands in the middle of the living room, staring at the screen long after it has gone black, and then turns the tv on, wakes up the computer and heads to kitchen to make coffee. He could go and he doesn’t. It makes his skin crawl, the idea to not be there and yet he stays.

The news coverage is surprisingly good this time, there are brave (and stupid) reporters and camera people getting way too close to action, and he idly files away a thought that Steve must hate it, to have civilians so close. Apparently the place is some kind of a laboratory complex masquerading as an office building, and the reason for Avengers being there isn’t quite clear, but the local officials assure they are there with government sanction. It’s not HYDRA, he thinks, unless they’ve changed their dress code. These people (and their suspiciously efficient security personnel / private army; _human enhancement_ , he thinks, although not close to anything HYDRA achieved) all wear uniforms with a lot of yellow. Not very tactical color, but maybe it’s some weird response to all the colorful superheroes these days.

From the coverage he notes that the Avengers team seems to have gelled very well by now, they work seamlessly together. His nervousness lessens when Wilson scoops down to grab Steve’s hand and drops him onto the roof before continuing up on his own. It all seems to be in control.

And then he gets a shot of adrenaline when he watches the events and knows, just knows that Steve is about to get hurt. For one bright second all he can think of is, _I should be there_.

Except it doesn’t go the way he expected. Steve flings his shield, sidesteps an enemy, and suddenly he has the upper hand again, regardless that he is outnumbered ten to one. Bucky stills, replays in his mind what happened, and sees the opening Steve took an advantage of. He himself only noticed it after the fact.

And it’s familiar. Back in time, he remembers how sometimes, when they were in an unusually tight spot, Steve’s senses and his brain just seemed to kick on another gear. Even on an everyday basis the serum had given Steve the ability to sense more, to take in more information and to instantly process it, often demonstrated by his instinctual ability to calculate the trajectories for the shield. Additionally, sometimes he just seemed to hit an overdrive, and then nothing seemed impossible. Bucky almost feels sorry for whoever the enemies are. Not quite, because he also remembers that it’s something Steve always ends up paying for.

***

It’s almost three in the morning when Steve comes home. Bucky is still up waiting but not too concerned over anything, since he knows Steve wasn’t hurt and the whole thing was wrapped up neatly in the end. He looks up from his book when he hears the door, and listens how Steve drops his shield down and takes off his jacket and boots. He huffs a bit at himself when Steve walks past the living room door without stopping, although he clearly notices Bucky there. Steve hasn’t said anything yet. There’s a noticeable tremor in his hands, and Bucky knows exactly what is going on, even if he only saw it a handful of times during the war.

He listens to the sounds coming from Steve’s room, and when it’s been quiet for a while and clear that Steve has no intention of changing or doing anything else, Bucky puts his book away and scoops Hecate up from the corner of the couch. She’s in a deep sleep, as evidenced by the fact she didn’t even notice Steve coming home, and doesn’t have time to grab at the couch in protest as she often does if someone tries to pick her up without her wanting to. Instead she sinks her claws to the fabric of Bucky’s sleeve, but it’s okay, not like his left arm has nerve-endings.

Steve is sitting on the floor, leaning to the side of the bed, arms resting on his bent knees. He doesn’t look at Bucky when he steps in, and seems to be carefully controlling the pace of his breathing. Hecate notices him now, and Bucky lets her down to scramble to Steve. As she is wont to do, she climbs on Steve’s lap and reaches up to bump her head at Steve’s chin. Bucky hears her start purring and then Steve lets out a breath, maybe one he hadn’t even realised holding, and relaxes a bit, scratches Hecate at her ears, under the chin.

Bucky goes to make coffee, and when it’s done takes the cups back to Steve’s room. Steve has stretched his legs out to make space for Hecate who is now settled down on his lap, still purring. Steve has both his hands buried in her fur. Bucky puts Steve’s cup on the floor and goes to sit on the other side, leaning to the bed as well.

At first they don’t talk, but then the ritual they had takes over, and Bucky recites, almost before realising, “ _A-tisket a-tasket_  
_A green and yellow basket_  
_I wrote a letter to my love_  
_And on the way I dropped it —_ ”

“ _I dropped it,_  
_I dropped it,_  
_And on the way I dropped it.  
A little boy he picked it up and put it in his pocket_,” Steve picks up the rhyme, familiar from their childhood.

They recite it three more times, this time alternating the lines. It had been an accident at the first time, finding out it helped. They’d gone through a very intense battle and when everything wound down, Bucky had known that somehow Steve hadn’t, wasn’t able to let go of the instincts and patterns that made him so efficient while fighting. That was the first time they found out how Steve’s supersoldier senses functioned at their peak, and that it was hard to turn them down, to suppress them to a manageable level after a sensory overload. It’s not something one can live with all the time, it’ll mess up one’s head, as Bucky knows all too well.

In retrospect it’s easy to point out the times it happened to him during the war; the moments when he wanted to crawl out of his skin, to run, to shut down. Even after all the mind wipes the moment in the dugout, when he’d been certain that Steve was going to die, had in fact been hurt, is still drawn in overtly clear lines in his head. And then under HYDRA control he’d been made to not suppress them but to enhance them, to rely on them all the time. It means that he now has hard time sleeping, hard time remembering he’s safe.

They’d found out soon that simple, familiar things helped to dial it down with Steve. Touch. And the rhyme, something from their childhood they carried with them everywhere.

After the third repeat Steve is clearly less on the edge and rubs his face, suddenly looking tired. Bucky knows he’ll probably end up sleeping around the clock.

“I really could skip this part of this gig,” Steve huffs.

“Since it keeps you alive, I think it’s a fair bargain,” Bucky points out. “Besides, you signed up for this.”

Steve laughs and finally picks up his cup. “True. Guess I’ll have to make do.” After taking a sip he continues, quiet, “Thanks, Bucky.”

Bucky still doesn’t know how to respond to it when Steve thanks him for something. He isn’t sure he ever did.

They drink their coffee, and afterwards he couldn’t explain how he ended up there, but he wakes up in Steve’s bed. He’s still wearing the clothes he had on last night, and it’s early morning, sun won’t be up until later. Means he didn’t manage to sleep that long. Steve is still asleep, and probably will be for hours yet. He’s turned towards Bucky, one of his hands extended a little towards him. Bucky also turns onto his side. He’s not in a hurry anywhere.

***

Steve is still on the edge when they finally get up in the early afternoon. He goes for a run which Bucky passes, his back is hurting him again, and he knows running would only aggravate it. He makes coffee and then ends up lying on the floor, letting the vertebra settle, trying to get his muscles loosen up. It helps a bit.

Steve is gone almost two hours, much longer than he normally runs but nowhere near the end of his endurance as Bucky well knows. He brings them something that smells spicy and brings vague images to Bucky’s head. He pushes them away, because he doesn’t want to be sliding into the past. It all tastes good though.

In the evening Steve is still fidgety, and while it’s nothing unusual as far as Bucky remembers, it still aggravates some part of his head, something that won’t let him stay silent.

“There is a way you could skip this, as you said you’d want to yesterday.”

Steve puts down his sketch book where only a few half attempts have made it onto paper. “I don’t really see how.”

“Because you don’t want to. It’s simple really. Remove the cause.”

“Can’t do that, Buck.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem isn’t it, you can’t stop. It’s not that you won’t stop or don’t want to stop, but that you can’t.” He ignores how stricken Steve looks at him and continues, “You keep saying that I can stop if I want to, that I can do anything I want, but what about you?”

“I –” Steve starts but it fades away almost before making it out of his mouth.

“You think you have duty, it’s what Captain America should do. And maybe it even is, and Captain America is you. But you are not Captain America, or you’re more than that. Do you even know what you want to do anymore?”

At the question the uncertainty that Bucky had seen in Steve disappears. “I know I want to be here with you. Even if we are arguing.” There’s an absolute certainty in the words.

“It’s not what I meant,” Bucky says, and it wasn’t, but it doesn’t change the fact that he feels warm hearing the words.

“It’s the truth though,” Steve says, steady now.

Bucky recognizes the tone of the voice, and part of him wants to scream, while the rest of him is just resigned. Steve knows what he means, and has clearly no intention to discuss it. Even if he pressed, Steve would just dig into the little bit of steady argument he had just landed on. It wouldn’t help at all, it never used to and Bucky doesn’t think Steve has changed enough for it to help now. But he also knows that these kind of arguments leave Steve thinking, and sometimes, not always but sometimes, he comes around and at least talks to Bucky about whatever they argued about, if not change his position.

“Still trying to carry the whole world on your shoulders,” Bucky says. “I’m going for a walk.”

He’s out of the apartment without hearing what it is that Steve starts to say, but it’s okay. If it’s important, they get back to it later, but more than likely it would be something that would start a proper fight, and he tries to avoid those these days. Being angry feels like he’s standing on a tilting ground, about to fall into the clutches of his past any minute.

He’s moving fast, maybe noticeably so, not really recognising people except as obstacles to be avoided, and he knows it’s dangerous. Sometimes, if he is unsteady, the people change from obstacles into something else, into something to be removed. Usually he keeps it from happening by really looking at them, really seeing that they are people.

On the bridge towards Manhattan it’s easier, since there isn’t really anyone around. The evening is cold and windy, and the open water makes it even more so. These days he doesn’t like the cold, but he doesn’t turn back, doesn’t go inside. He steadies his pace into a light jog, something that would be perfectly manageable for a normal human.

The realisation comes in a flash, and it feels almost ironic, how everything has changed and yet some things still have their own familiar shape, even if the context is now different. Back in the war he never wanted Steve there, not before the serum or after. And it’s the same now. Only now he can pinpoint more precisely the reason why. Somehow with everything he has experienced, he can look at it from a distance and identify the cause within himself.

It’s not the danger, not really. He hates it, true, but it’s something that is manageable, by Steve and even by him, if he wants to do it. It’s what fighting a war or now just whichever terrorist or monster happens to be the flavor of the day does to Steve. How it consumes him, and leaves no space for other things that have been there ever since Bucky has known Steve, things and traits he associates as _being_ Steve.

And with this realisation he also knows that it’s unfair, that he can feel like that but he cannot really demand a change from Steve, not if he doesn’t want it. After all, Steve has accepted him as he is now, with all his changes, and if this is the change in Steve, then he should try to accept it as well. He’s always tried not to be too big of a hypocrite.

***

He’s somewhere in Midtown, he’s not really keeping a track of the streets, when he turns into an alley and notices straight away the men leaning to a wall and how their stance changes when he sees them. They pose no trouble for him; they are unconscious but probably not badly hurt in moments. One of their knives he breaks against the wall, the other one he keeps, since it seems to have a nice balance. They should have thought about the possibility that some people walk into alleys because they don’t need to fear things lurking in them.

Afterwards he climbs to the roof via the nearest fire escape, since the fight put him to an edge even if it was no real trouble. Up on top he feels calmer for a second until a woman appears onto the edge of the roof. She’s dressed in a way that can pass as both practical and unremarkable in many situations, but there is something about her posture, that if you know to look for it, tells that she’s not to be messed with. Bucky knows how to look. He’d been aware of her crouched on a fire escape on the other side of the alley, and he knows a regular human couldn’t have gotten on this side of the alley and up to the roof this fast.

He’s wary and keeps the distance between them, himself in the shadow, her in the faint light spilling up from the street nearby, but he doesn’t sense a threat from her. Yet he knows how well the women that went through the Black Widow program can project harmlessness, and it makes him not to drop his guard. He doesn’t leave either, because despite himself, he is curious.

Without any preamble she says, “You’re stronger than you should be, faster too. Gifted, like the guy wearing the flag.”

She sounds curious, and still not at all threatening, so Bucky goes with honesty. “It doesn’t feel like a gift some days. Most days. And I’m nothing like him.”

“Really? How come?”

“I’m just not. And what about you, you’re not just another person hanging out at an alley either. What do you want?”

“A lot of days I’d care a lot less, but today it’s cold and my job was a bust and I’m bored. Also you took a knife at the arm, if you need patching up I know a nurse who’ll help and not ask questions. Well, she asks but knows how to keep quiet.”

“I’m fine.”

“If you say so. I’m Jessica by the way. If you ever need a PI you’ll find me at Alias Investigations.”

“I’m pretty good at finding things for myself,” Bucky says, cautious still, but becoming more and more sure that she actually is who and what she says she is.

“Can’t blame me for trying, got to make a living.”

“I’m James,” he says, a little late and almost surprising himself.

She nods, as if having had something confirmed. “You know, I’m pretty good with faces, and how people move, that kind of stuff. Have to be in my line of work. I saw your face before the guys down there tried to jump you, and you look just like Bucky Barnes. Have the same name too. But that seems unlikely.”

“More unlikely than a tiny woman being able to jump three stories up from standing still?” he asks.

“Actually, yes. So you are really the same guy.”

“For some given definition.” It doesn’t escape Bucky that he just confirmed being someone he has repeatedly said he isn’t, to both Steve and himself, ever since he came to live with Steve. But here he is.

“How did that happen?”

“There were people with too many resources and crazy ideas and not enough concern for ethics.”

“And,” she continues, now slower, visibly on edge, “the reason why you didn’t get hurt when you got the knife on your arm was because it’s metal isn’t it? You’re also the guy from DC.”

Bucky isn’t surprised she arrived to the conclusion, and strangely it makes him less tense. He moves closer to the edge of the roof, more into the light, keeping his stance non-threatening. “Yes. I am. What about it?” He can’t help the last part coming out more than half as a challenge.

“I suppose I’m still curious. Why’d you do it? From what I remember from history, it doesn’t seem like something Bucky Barnes would be likely to do.”

“No. But they took it from me, took everything until the only thing I had was their orders, the killing.”

“And now? Because I’ve noticed New York isn’t getting blown up. More than usual anyway.”

“I don’t do that anymore. Now I have, I don’t know –,” Bucky halts, looking for a word.

“A choice?” She suggests.

“No, it’s not really that. It wasn’t that I couldn’t choose differently, there was no one forcing my hand when I had to pull the trigger. I just didn’t know anything else, didn’t know there was any other possibility for me. But now I do.”

“I see,” she says, and then hesitates. “I was made to kill too. A woman.”

The confession is rushed, as if she doesn’t want to talk about it and does anyway, much the same way that Bucky has felt like speaking with her. And that’s when it clicks for him, the reason why he’d felt like trusting her. He’d sensed something of a kindred spirit in her.

“You were brainwashed?” Bucky asks.

“No, not really. There was a man who could tell people what to do and they would. It was some kind of a viral thing he had. He made me stay with him, live with him. Do things. And kill her.”

“But you got free.”

“I did. And then he tried to come back, but he won’t anymore, because I killed him. That was all my choise. Sometimes I think I did it too late. It doesn’t really help.”

“I know. Things we do, even if there are, mitigating circumstances I guess? They don’t go away. We can try to be better I think, but it doesn’t undo the past.”

“Yeah, you get it. It’s sometimes difficult to explain about to people who haven’t experienced it. But they can still help.”

“You had people to help you?”

“A few,” Jessica says, and it’s the first time she smiles. “One most of all. My best friend. Wouldn’t give up even when I tried to push her away. I hope you have someone like that too.”

“I do. Too stubborn for his own good.” Bucky moves to the edge of the roof because the discussion is suddenly draining him, even if it’s not in a bad way. He stops on the ledge. “Don’t test her dedication as severely as I did, okay.”

“I’m not sure if I haven’t already, what did you do?”

“ _I_ am fairly sure, because I nearly beat him to death.”

***

It’s past midnight when Bucky comes home. The lights are still on in the living room, but it’s empty. Steve’s sketchbook is open on the table, and on the two pages are two similar pictures, the two of them leaning onto each other. It’s the first time Bucky remembers seeing Steve draw himself in any form since coming back, and the first time he’s drawn Bucky from before.. On the left they are children, clearly sitting on the roof of Steve’s building. On the right they are as they are now, sitting on the couch, Hecate sleeping on the back of it between their heads. There is a caption under them.

_This is what I’ve always wanted._

Bucky stares at it for a second and then clicks the lights out, leaving the book open on the table. The light is on both in his bedroom and Steve’s own, Steve is leaning onto his pillows and reading something.

Bucky goes to the bathroom and takes a quick shower and brushes his teeth. He changes into the long sleeved shirt and sweatpants he usually wears to sleep, but doesn’t go to bed. Instead he barely pauses before heading out of his room, putting the light out when he does. The covers on the other side of Steve’s bed are turned down, and when he burrows under them Steve sets his book down on the nightstand and shuts the last light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big chunk of this chapter changed quite a bit from my original plan with the release of Jessica Jones. I like to have other MCU characters make their appearance in this one, and the original plan was actually to have Matt there (or Daredevil, since he would have been in mask all through it) but with JJ out, it was apparent that it really had to be Jessica. There is so much similarity between her and Bucky's experiences that I had to have in the story, and this chapter was where it worked best. Because of that the conversation is very different from what I had planned, but I do think it's better and more suitable now. 
> 
> Also Steve and Trish need to meet. Maybe he should appear at Trish Talk.


	7. the story underneath the story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! The break was longer than usual due to inspiration directed elsewhere, resulting in some 20 000 words of different fic, busy times at work and a freaking flu. At least this is sort of THINGS HAPPEN SO MUCH -chapter.

It’s the kind of day in March when one suddenly realises it’s undeniably spring, with no hint of winter in the air. The breeze is gentle and the sun warm on Steve’s skin when he comes home from work. He feels perfectly calm standing outside, and he stays a few minutes before going in. For a moment he forgets all the stress he feels most of the time, even if it’s just in his subconsciousness. There are always things at the back of his mind, ready to remind him that his life is not simple at all these days.

Currently there are three main sources of stress for him. First there is his job, which definitely is at a higher end on a scale of stressful jobs one can have, but it’s also the kind of stress that he can deal with. He thinks he does deal with it better now than he used to for the first couple of years after waking up. These days he no longer lets it consume him, and while taking more responsibility is taxing in many ways, it helps to be able to make the decisions for himself, not having to second guess those made by other people. It helps knowing he’s not going to run into morally dubious things when there’s no way to back out. 

The rest of his stress is related to Bucky, and he feels a little like he’s committing a betrayal of sorts when he acknowledges it, but it is true. Of course, they are not actually Bucky’s  _ fault _ , all the reasons that give Steve stress and anxiety, and because of this it also feels a little bit ridiculous when the feeling of betrayal comes up. It’s complicated, and a good part of it probably happens because he knows Bucky doesn’t really agree with Steve about how much of the responsibility is his. 

Bucky’s mental state and progress is a constant source of worry for Steve, as much as he hates to admit it. He knows there’s been improvement, both from when Bucky came to live with Steve and especially since the helicarriers, but they’re still nowhere near a place where he’d say Bucky is fine. Not yet. There are now more good days than there used to be, more good days than bad, which  _ is _ a victory, but the bad days haven’t completely gone away. It’s still a somewhat regular occurrence that he comes in and finds Bucky sitting in the hallway, clearly not quite sure of what is real and what is memory. Still, Steve is grateful, because it has gotten less frequent, and now it’s quantifiably easier for Bucky to regain his grasp of reality than it used to be. Easier to believe that the reality indeed is what it is, that it’s not a hallucination caused by his mind trying to escape from pain. That Bucky really is there with Steve. It is getting better all the time, even if there are occasional relapses, and in time, Steve truly believes Bucky can reach a state where he is fine. Probably not where it’s perfect, or even easy on a daily basis, but good enough. They just need time, and patience while it marches on.

Only, the third source of stress and anxiety for Steve is the constant shadow of knowing that they might not have the time they need. That someday soon someone might come and try to take Bucky away, and whatever happened then, he’s sure it would take Bucky a step back. If not several. At first the fear was abstract, not really something that had a specific shape, because he wasn’t really sure who would come for Bucky, but ever since Tony visited it has taken form and become more real. Infinitely more likely. And then, weeks passed and nothing happened. It made the winter strange, like they were living under a shadow, and every good thing, every step forward came with the knowledge that they might lose everything sooner rather than later.

That spring day Steve is able to just forget it all for a moment, to feel nothing but peace. He goes in, puts down his shield, takes off his jacket and boots and picks up Hecate. He finds Bucky reading in the living room, looking like he’s had a normal day, nothing special. Steve has just started thinking about what they should have for dinner when the calm is shattered by the ring of his phone.

It’s Pepper, and just seeing her name on his screen makes Steve uneasy. They haven’t really talked since Tony’s visit, and he’s fairly sure it’s not a social call now. Turns out he’s right.

Without any preamble, she says, “Tony just took off in his Iron Man suit and said he needed to see you. He seemed upset about something but wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

Steve goes cold all over, because there are terrible conclusions that immediately jump to his head, but his racing mind also knows that it must be something other, or something more than what they talked about back in November, if Tony is suddenly upset again. Still, it doesn’t give him any hint how it all might go. He’s loathe to think it will come to blows, has never truly expected it would, but now he finds himself doubting that belief, however much he hates himself for it.

“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” he reassures Pepper.

She’s silent for a second, and then, clearly deciding, says, “I’ll call Rhodey.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. We’ll get back to you, or Tony will, as soon as we can,” Steve says before hanging up. He doesn’t need to tell Bucky what’s going on; they both have good enough hearing to make sense on both ends of phone conversations. “Let’s go to the roof,” he just says.

On their way out Bucky picks up the shield and silently hands it to Steve, who wants to argue that they won’t need it, but finds that he can’t. Because of his own uncertainty, but also because of Bucky, who is clearly on the edge, and Steve knows how his head works well enough to guess that it’ll probably help Bucky at least marginally if  _ Steve _ has something to defend himself with. Regardless of whether there’s an actual need for it.

They barely make it up before Tony is there, and as he opens the visor, it’s still a surprise to see how distraught he is, eve with the warning from Pepper. Tony doesn’t immediately tell them what’s wrong, he starts in a characteristically roundabout way.

“Good you’re out, Pepper called you, didn’t she? There’s no need for your oversized frisbee by the way.” Tony speaks even faster than usual, and is clearly jittery even in the armor, which usually dampens it.

Steve can’t help but be relieved at his words, but has to point out, “Look who’s all Iron Man,” at which Tony seems to remember and stumbles out of the armor, unsteady enough that Steve has to grab him by arm for Tony to stay on his feet. It’s almost as if Tony’s drunk but not quite, there’s something subtly different about him.

“Right, yeah, well that was the fastest way to get here, I mean do you know what the traffic is like, even now that it’s not quite rush hour.”

“What was so important you couldn’t wait?” Steve decides to straight up ask, and Tony hands him a tablet that he’d somehow carried in his armor, clearly disgusted.

“That! I cannot believe it, I mean I knew he wasn’t the greatest but that? Did you know?”

Steve takes the tablet and hands the shield to Bucky so that he can look through the documents. They’re old, scans of typed up reports, and it takes him a moment to decipher what they’re about. When he realises they are descriptions of a machine, a procedure for altering memory, he hears Bucky’s breath hiss behind him; clearly he believes as Steve does it’s the same procedure that was used on him. 

The reason for Tony being distraught is evident, because instead of having been labeled as HYDRA’s, the documents bear the SHIELD insignia on top, and the signature at the bottom is Howard Stark’s.

For a second Steve feels like his mind is racing but its wheels are spinning in the mud. There is the obvious conclusion, the one Tony clearly has jumped to, that Howard was HYDRA. It’s also something that Steve categorically cannot believe. He knew Howard during the war, and while they didn’t always see eye to eye about everything, they were close. They worked well together, came to respect each other and Steve is confident in saying that the man he knew would never have gone to HYDRA, not even factoring in how the war changed him, changed all of them. 

Tony is still staring at him expectantly, and from the corner of his eye he can tell Bucky has gone still, Steve’s shield hanging from his limp left hand, right hand clutching the tags he always carries with him. Steve knows he’s the one who has to resolve the situation, to settle both Tony and Bucky. Same as ever his instinct is to try and immediately help Bucky, but he knows it’s not a good idea right now, this is something that’ll require privacy, he believes. And what he has to say to Tony might even be helpful to Bucky.

“No, I didn’t know this. I hadn’t found them yet. But I knew Howard, Tony, and if you think he was HYDRA, you’re mistaken.” Steve begins by replying Tony’s earlier question, and then flips through the scans again, trying to make sense of what the whole story could have been. He suspects Tony hasn’t actually read all of them through; he’d seen the subject matter and signature, and gone from there since Howard was a sore point. So much so that it wouldn’t surprise Steve to find out Tony didn’t stop to think or consider whether Howard being HYDRA was actually  likely or not.

“How do you explain those then, because they clearly spell out what he did.”

“That they do, but they are all still under SHIELD insignia, official research. Here, look at the last one. It’s a memo about the project being discontinued. Says the memory erasure machine isn’t viable for treatment, since it causes more stress on the brain than a human can bear. There is a note that someone with accelerated healing could possibly withstand it, but no one else. Sounds like Howard worked on it, and it didn’t function as intended, so he stopped and then HYDRA quietly appropriated it for their own use.”

“Okay, maybe.” Tony seems calmer, and Steve is thankful he seems to be willing to listen. “But why would he create something like that in the first place?”

“Could be many reasons. I know the war was hard on him, it was hard on all of us, and I know he lamented the effects it had on people. It mentions treatment here, could be for handling trauma, make the patient forget it. I’m not so sure that would be a good way for treating people, even if the machine worked, but it is within the realm of things he might try, I think. Maybe even some people with HYDRA put it in his head, just framed it as treatment and not control. Howard wouldn’t have gone for that.”

“Seems to me it wasn’t fully approved though, since there’s also that memo saying the project should be hidden from Carter,” Tony notes.

“I saw that. And, well, I’m not actually surprised. I’ve talked about SHIELD with Peggy, and she told me that while they worked together for decades, they didn’t always think alike with Howard. Peggy said he sometimes tried to fix the world, and didn’t realise his methods weren’t the best, that one person can’t just override everyone else and do what they want.” Steve can’t help but think that this is something Tony definitely has inherited, considering the whole thing with Ultron, but doesn’t remark on it. He thinks that after he’s calmed down a bit Tony might even make the connection himself.

“Yeah, his methods left something to be desired pretty often,” Tony just says, and it’s not really difficult to see where the remark comes from.

“Probably. But he hated HYDRA, and wouldn’t have worked with them. Furthermore, if he got wind that his inventions were being used for other than intended purposes, well. It would explain a lot of things.”

“So it would.” Tony stands there for a moment, clearly reflecting, looking from Steve to Bucky, who doesn’t seem quite so stricken as he was a moment earlier. “Well. This whole thing is one big clusterfuck,” Tony finally decides, aiming it at both of them, and Steve knows it’s an admission, a peace offering, and he takes it.

“It really is,” Steve says and then notices Bucky tense again, his attention directed at the sky.

A few moments later Rhodey in his armor touches down next to them and exclaims, “Oh, I’m so glad you guys are not fighting, I’d hate to have to pick a side between my best friend and team leader.”

It’s so unexpected that Steve nearly laughs but he holds back. He knows it would probably come out a tad hysterical now that despite the distressing revelation about Howard, he knows he won’t have to come against Tony, not on this. “For the record, I wouldn’t have held it against you to side with your friend,” he just says.

“Would have been a bit hypocritical,” Tony says, already snapping back to his normal mode, where his emotions are covered with quips and sarcasm. Steve can read him better these days, and leaves it, since he’s just so relieved. “For the record, I kind of doubt you would have just taken it lying down and hiring lawyers if I’d decided to take this to the police or whoever, you have no chill when it comes to him,” Tony continues while gesturing towards Bucky.

Steve feels like he should try and make a snappy comeback, but he has to allow that Tony isn’t that wrong. “Well, maybe. Guess we won’t see now.”

“I know I’m right, considering every American learns in history that you invaded Austria alone for him,” Tony just points out, and now Steve would get into it just by principle, except Bucky snorts softly behind him, clearly amused and not so numb anymore, and Steve lets it slide. Almost.

“It wasn’t the whole of Austria, I think you need a brush up with your history lessons.”

They fall silent, the discussion running suddenly dry, and Steve realises he’s exhausted. It’s clear they all are, even Rhodey, who must have worried the whole way in. He’s the one who breaks the silence. “Right, as fun as these meetings on a roof are, I think we should get going before the press gets here with choppers. I don’t think we need that. Come on Tony, I’ll take you home so Pepper can stop worrying.”

“Right, yes, it was getting awkward,” Tony says and gets back into the armor. “Barnes, stop by any time, I’m sure I can do better on prosthetics than HYDRA, and Cap, don’t invade any foreign countries.”

“Don’t build any robot armies,” Steve retorts, and the two take off, leaving him and Bucky standing on the roof. Steve tugs Bucky’s sleeve. “Come on Buck, let’s go back inside.”

 

* * *

 

In the apartment Steve takes the shield from Bucky’s limp hand and sets it back leaning to the wall where it usually stays. Then he takes Bucky’s right hand and gently coaxes the fingers open. “Try and let go, I think you may be close to breaking skin here,” he says, and it’s only then that Bucky realises that the tags are digging into his flesh. There are a couple of deep gouges in his palm but no blood. Steve takes the tags, puts them in Bucky’s left hand, and then he rubs Bucky’s palm until the marks are less prominent and the hand doesn’t feel so cramped anymore. When Steve let’s go and heads into kitchen presumably to make coffee, part of Bucky wants to ask him to keep holding on.

Bucky goes to the living room and settles onto the couch, absently stroking Hecate’s back. She acknowledges it by starting to purr but doesn’t move. He feels numb all over, and can’t quite decide if he feels more free now that the most pressing threat to his current state of existence has been taken away. He thinks so anyway, from the way Steve and Stark had reacted, but he doesn’t quite understand everything that passed between them. There is a part of him, irritated, that wonders if he would have understood before, if this is one more thing that has changed in him.

Steve comes in, hands him one of the mugs he brought and settles next to him on the couch. “Everything alright?” he then asks.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says, and it’s even more true than usual. Abstract questions are still difficult for him in general, but now he truly doesn’t know how he feels. “Why did he just do that? Decide not to —?”

“Not to be an ass and try and drag you to prison? It’s probably that Tony feels somewhat responsible,” Steve says, as if it isn’t even more confusing.

“But. He didn’t do anything.”

“No, but his father contributed to what HYDRA did to you, even if he didn’t mean to, and would have gone against them if he’d known. It’s, well. I think it just reminded Tony of how things we do can have unexpected consequences, and that most things, especially when it comes to something like HYDRA, are not cut and dry simple. And maybe he’s starting to see not only what happened to his parents, but also what happened to you, and that none of you are truly responsible.”

Bucky turns it around in his head, but can’t escape the fact that he doesn’t quite agree. “It doesn’t change anything, though. The dead are still dead, and it was my hand that did it, however you want to say HYDRA was responsible.”

“HYDRA  _ was _ responsible, it’s not just me saying it, it’s the truth.” 

Sometimes Bucky wonders where Steve gets all the energy for this conviction, remembers wondering it long before the war.

“But I still remember doing it, it doesn’t go away however much you keep telling me that.”

Now Steve moves closer, lifts his hand to cradle Bucky’s head, and pulls him close so that he leans his forehead on Steve’s.

“I  _ know _ , ” Steve says, “and I wish it never had happened so that you didn’t have to have those memories, but I’ll keep saying it wasn’t your fault, that you had no choice, not even to die, and that all the responsibility is on them. Maybe it doesn’t help much, but it is the truth.”

Bucky can’t find words, but he thinks Steve doesn’t expect anything either. They stay leaning on each other for a long time.

***

Sleeping is still uneven, and mostly the best Bucky can aim for is neutral. Sometimes he goes night after night sleeping for a few hours, only to crash one night for about eight, and then maybe going back to sleeping four to six hours a night, which even if not ideal, is enough to sustain him. There are more dreams now, more nightmares, and he’s sure it’s connected to him remembering better. Now that he has more context, more memories that are whole instead of in pieces, they make their way easier into his dreams. The memories themselves come easier these days as well, it’s not so much about pulling them any more. They come by themselves, often faster and more insistent than Bucky wants. Now it’s more like drowning.

Sleeping in Steve’s bed has become a regular thing. It’s approximately two nights a week that Bucky finds himself there, and he has a hard time deciding what to think about it. Not how it affects him; he knows he sleeps better there. Not well; he still has nightmares and just general difficulty, but better than in his own bed. The trouble is, he has no idea what it means. He may be a brain damaged amnesiac, but he does know enough that sleeping in the same bed with someone is significant, and not usually done with friends. Yet, Steve seems to be completely unfazed about it, as if it doesn’t matter to him which bed Bucky ends up sleeping in.

He remembers they used to sometimes sleep in the same bed with Steve, when they lived together and winters were cold and they didn’t have much money for heat. Two bodies was warmer than one, it was completely practical. Now though, there’s no need for more warmth since the thermostat works perfectly, there are no money problems and it’s already spring. Bucky doesn’t understand why Steve lets it happen, why he even sometimes suggests it, albeit in a roundabout way.

It is all related to the gnawing uncertainty of Bucky not knowing what exactly they were to each other. What they are now, if it’s the same or different from before. He’s read the biographies, seen the Smithsonian exhibit, and he remembers the words. Best friends. Fellow soldiers. They are true and yet insufficient, somehow he knows it. Steve’s answer that one night he had felt out of himself doesn’t really help that much either. It had felt  _ true _ , when Steve said they were just them, still feels true, more than anything else, but it doesn’t really explain anything. Bucky feels like he’s missing something, and so he keeps digging at his memories, trying to understand how he felt about things instead of just remembering the events. The more he keeps digging, the easier they come, both good and bad, the latter sometimes so much more vivid. He doesn’t stop, because this is important, maybe more important than anything else.

***

Mostly Bucky dreams of true things, things that actually happened. On some very rare occasions the dreams are kind for him. Most of the time he doesn’t remember, is just left with a sense of having lived through something while he slept. And too often his dreams are terrible, all too vivid and fill him with dread. It doesn’t matter whether they depict things he did or things that were done to him. When he wakes afterwards, it’s always the same ache that burns him.

It’s almost a relief when he dreams of something that didn’t happen, even if it’s terrible. Somehow he always knows, recognizes when it’s something that his brain cooked up instead of something he remembers, and then it fades. Those nights are not very restful, but the imagined dreams don’t linger like the true dreams, and the days afterwards are not necessarily ruined.

There is an exception, though. Of course there is an exception. Bucky surfaces from the dream, heart rate close to two hundred, breathing ragged and his throat sore like he has been screaming. Maybe he has, he can’t tell. What he does know is he cannot stay in bed, has to get away and he’s out of the room before the thought fully registers. 

In the hallway he literally runs into Steve who stumbles out of his room, and it truly is a sign of how far he’d upset himself, that he didn’t even know that Steve was awake and moving about. For a moment they just cling to each other as if by reflex, and Bucky relishes the touch, feeling the warmth and pulse screaming at him that Steve is alive, the knowledge and reality seeping back into his brain. He’s so absorbed in just feeling that it takes him a while to start processing what exactly it is that he is feeling. That’s why he only notices Steve’s elevated heart rate when it’s almost down to normal, the line of his frown when it’s already disappearing. There are still shadows in Steve’s eyes, and Bucky realises that Steve definitely had some other reason than hearing him for getting out of bed. He knows full well he isn’t the only one with nightmares in the household.

They make coffee and drink it in living room, curled at opposite ends of the couch. Hecate, clearly deciding there will be no more drama that night, flops onto the floor and starts grooming herself.

Steve is the one to break the silence. “You had a nightmare.” It’s a statement, not an question, and it doesn’t really surprise Bucky that Steve knows without asking.

Bucky just says, “So did you.” He doesn’t volunteer details about his dream. It’s bad enough it’s in his head, he doesn’t need it in Steve’s head as well.

“Yeah,” Steve acknowledges, but doesn’t elaborate. 

It’s somewhat uncommon actually, and it makes Bucky prompt him, even if he does notice the hypocrisy of asking for something when he doesn’t give himself anything. Steve doesn’t keep count though, not of his trust, not of anything he gives. Sometimes, most of the time really, it makes Bucky feel guilty, to take so much, to cost so much, and yet he does it anyway. Because it’s the only way anything makes sense for him. Being here with Steve. That’s why he asks, “What about?”

Steve is silent for a while, long enough that Bucky almost thinks he isn’t going to answer, but then he says, haltingly, “It wasn’t actually a nightmare. In a way. If I were to just describe it, I think many would believe it’s an actual dream of mine, something I want.”

“That makes no sense,” Bucky says, flat. None of his nightmares are like that.

“Maybe it doesn’t. I dreamed I came back from the war. That I didn’t crash the plane, that I got out before, wasn’t knocked out cold. Something like that. I got back and we won, and I came home and had a life. And it was, I don’t know. I had all the things one might think are needed for happy life. And truth is, in my dream I lived that charmed life and wanted to scream, to break out of it. Because you still fell from that train and I couldn’t do anything.”

Steve falls silent, and Bucky digests his words for a while. He doesn’t know what impulse makes him speak, makes him say the words he doesn’t really want to say. “Maybe it would have been better that way, for you to have your life. You would have been happy.”

Steve shifts closer to him on the couch. “No, Bucky. No. I mean, if I’d made it back, I guess I could have been. I would have gone on, and learned to handle my losses the same way everyone else did. Maybe I would have had a family, worked with SHIELD, done something else. Become Tony’s godfather. I don’t know. But I don’t think I would have found you any sooner. Zola would have made sure of it. And if it had happened like that, we wouldn’t have ended up here like this. I don’t know what would have happened. I don’t have any certainty that you would have found your way back in that reality, like you have now. And I don’t want that. I don’t want the possibility of you being lost forever.”

“Steve —” Bucky starts, but doesn’t find words to continue. He doesn’t know if he wants to tell Steve he’s wrong, or that he shouldn’t want to sacrifice his happiness for Bucky, or just generally protest. The words get lost when Steve stares at him, eyes wide and startled, and only then Bucky realises he called Steve by his given name, for the first time after coming back. He looks down, unable to hold Steve’s gaze, and feels more than sees Steve shift even closer. Steve puts his coffee mug on the table and then takes Bucky’s free hand. It’s the left, and Bucky can feel the gentle pressure of Steve’s fingers but not their warmth like he could with the other. Steve doesn’t seem to care.

“Bucky, I’m sorry for all that happened to you, and that I couldn’t find you sooner. But trust me when I say this, I wouldn’t change this, no matter how difficult it is sometimes, for any other reality where you aren’t with me.”

They end up watching  _ Fantasia _ , leaning onto each other, Hecate flopped half on both their laps. The movie with its limited narrative and conceptual flow soothes Bucky’s nerves, and in the end he falls asleep, head on Steve’s shoulder.

***

Steve still regularly visits Carter (both Carters really) in DC, and the visits in itself are not a problem for Bucky. In fact, if Steve stopped doing it, Bucky’d tell him to go. It’s strange really, the way these visits are essential for Steve. They are obviously painful, it’s understandably hard for Steve to watch the woman he was in love with, and still loves, to grow old, to forget who he is, to recognize him as if it’s the first time that he’s been back. And yet, there is a peculiar sort of peace in Steve every time he comes back, and that is important.

The problem is that every weekend Steve is gone, is a bad weekend for Bucky. Without a fail. He doesn’t know why it happens, why it’s in some ways more difficult than when Steve is on a mission, fighting and in danger. There’s no thread of fear that is ever present if Bucky is back at home when he knows the Avengers have been deployed, but there is a sense of not belonging. These days if he stays behind when Steve is on mission it’s by choice. The visits to DC are something that’s outside of the sphere of his life that overlaps Steve’s. Steve asked once if he wanted to come, and he had categorically refused. It isn’t something he feels equipped to do.

It irritates him, both because it’s something that happens that he doesn’t fully understand but also because it’s something he really does not want happening. He tries to hide it, but by now he’s resigned to the fact that Steve is fairly perceptive when it comes to him, his moods and his mental state, and that Steve can tell. Not to mention it’s not uncommon for Steve to come home only to find Bucky sitting in the hallway, as he tends to do when reality is fragile or he’s not quite there some other way. And since Steve knows, it also means he feels guilty for leaving, and that is not something that should happen. Steve even knows that he shouldn’t, Bucky has told him not to, and rationally he understands he can’t just always stay. Yet he still feels guilty, Bucky can tell. He doesn’t even want to examine whether Steve has clocked on the fact that bad days happen more frequently when he’s been to see Carter instead of him being away for any other reason. A cynical part of his mind, which admittedly these days is quite a big part, thinks Steve probably has. He was always good with patterns, and is even better since the serum.

There is the part where Bucky doesn’t want this to happen because he doesn’t want to be so reliant on Steve. It’s not healthy that one person should be so much a center of one’s world, that without them nothing else makes sense. It’s not good for either person in the equation. Bucky knows all that, but it doesn’t change the fact that it very much is the truth of his life now.

He doesn’t want it to be the truth; for Steve, since Bucky already has cost so much to him by coming back. A part of him reminds him of Romanova’s words, of the pictures she showed him of Steve clearly unhappy, and how she said it was better now. Yet, he has a hard time believing her, since he knows of her past, knows it’s very much in her nature to not be straight with people. Bucky can think of a dozen reasons for her to want him believe what she’d told him. He wants to believe, but can’t. Because of her, and because of himself, because he knows what he is, and it’s hard to see how anything good could come out of him. When the thought crosses his mind, he also contemplates leaving, but he knows he won’t. Knows it would mean oblivion, and he’s not ready to do that, no matter what he costs Steve. He’s not that good.

And then there is pride; the shame of not being able to function by himself. There’s a voice in his head telling him he used to be better than this, should be better than this. How pathetic is it anyway to forget to eat or drink, to not know how to sleep. The voice tells him to get up, to get things together, to be better since he is there anyway. It tells him not to be burden for Steve. Tells him not to let Steve see that he was again incapable of taking care of himself, even doing basic things a child knows how to do.

He waits.

***

He does manage to go out, as it happens. 

On Sunday morning he feels less crazy and more stable, and the apartment feels entirely too lonely. It’s a sunny day, and the spring suddenly arrived in full force so that it is warm enough to actually spend time outside, instead of just going from one place to another. He’s out before the first light, grabs a sandwich from one of the places that seem to be open at all hours, and then just wanders around the city. He ends up sitting on a bench by some park, he hasn’t really kept consciously track of things, but clearly some part of him knew where he was going. He gets a proof of it soon enough, and he’s long past believing things to be just coincidences, especially when they stem from his own actions.

Wilson’s body language says he’s deliberately projecting calm when he greets Bucky, and he’s good at it. It’s not exactly a surprise, considering his pre-Avengers career. He hands Bucky coffee in a paper cup, with a little bit of sugar and splash of cream in it. Neutral, safe, Bucky registers, and notes that even though Steve talks to Wilson about a lot of things, he clearly hasn’t gone down to details like how he takes his coffee. He tends to go black and with more sugar, but any coffee is good. While his mind absently files away these details, he watches Wilson from the corner of his eye and only then remembers that this is where the other man comes every Sunday, volunteering at the VA. Steve had told Bucky, same as he told other things about his new team.

Definitely not a coincidence, his being here, although he doesn’t quite know why his head had decided he needed to come.

They end up not talking, just drink their coffees and Bucky is grateful of it. Part of him, the one that catalogues every experience, rebels at it because it’s useless in a way, no new information received. And yet, there’s another part, one that has emerged during his stay with Steve, that points out that even if they are not talking this may still be them bonding, getting closer, and alliances are beneficial, especially with people that Steve trusts.

Wilson is the one who breaks the silence when their coffees are nearly gone. “Natasha told me you thought you aren’t good for Steve.”

“The Black Widow talks too much,” Bucky says, a bit defensive, although he knows it’s not quite accurate. He knows she’s the kind of person who says only exactly what she means to say. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say she talked more than he would want, but that would be pointing the discussion at himself. And there is yet another part of him that wants to hear Wilson’s take on the matter.

“I’m not sure about that. But what I meant to tell you, once I asked Steve what made him happy. It was only the second time I met him, but I could tell he wasn't, and on top of it wasn't too keen on talking about the reasons for it either. He didn't have an answer. Said he didn't know. It wasn’t evasion or a lie, it was just that.” Sam pauses for a moment. “Now, though, it’s different. Now he knows.”

Bucky could fake not understanding what Wilson is aiming at, but he doesn’t bother. They both would know it’s a lie. “It’s still not the smartest thing to do. It’s never going to be the same it was before. He shouldn’t invest so much of himself, because there’s no point.”

Wilson just smiles and shakes his head. “You don’t get to decide that. He does.”

Bucky stares at a spot on the ground in front of him until the city suddenly feels too large and busy. “I need to go,” he says, and doesn’t wait for a reply.

 

* * *

 

It’s another weekend when Steve comes to see Peggy and finds out it’s not going to be easy. It never really is, but this more than usual. She seems more fragile, more stumbling inside her head, and it underlines the fact that she is going to pass away, probably sooner rather than later. Steve makes a mental note to try and visit more often, to aim for every three weeks rather than once a month, knowing it’ll be hard. He also knows he’ll regret it if he won’t. Now that it’s been almost four years since he thawed from the ice, he still finds it difficult to explain people why his visits are so regular. Funnily enough it seems Bucky is the one that understands the best, even without Steve having to explain at all, even now that a lot of human interaction still seems to be somewhat on the abstract level for Bucky. Something he has to think about. Steve guesses it comes from not having been treated as a human being in such a long time.

He goes to visit Peggy, and tries his best to be cheerful and talk to her, regardless of the kind of day it is. He leaves the nursing home, goes for a run that doesn’t really help and has dinner with Sharon. Sometimes he feels a bit guilty that they only meet at times like this, when he’s been to see Peggy and it’s still heavy on his mind, coloring their interactions. But of course, she is who she is, she will always remind him of Peggy, at least by tangent. 

This weekend Sharon also seems to be more worried about her aunt, perhaps because there has been a definite decline in her condition.

“You know Carter wasn’t actually my surname originally,” she says.

“I hadn’t thought about it, but now that you mention it, I know it’s not the name of your parents.”

“Right. Actually when I started aiming for SHIELD, Aunt Peggy suggested I’d use her name instead of my own, for safety reasons.”

Steve nods. “Makes sense, to not have obvious connection to your family when you’re a spy. But it’s still your family name.”

“Yeah, but it’s not used by anyone but Aunt Peggy precisely for that reason. Of course there was baggage, she was a director even then, but I decided I didn’t care.”

“Took it more as a challenge?” Steve suggests, and Sharon laughs.

“Something like that, I guess. Some people suggested I was getting preferential treatment because of my family, but they only ever suggested that once,” she says and it’s Steve’s turn to laugh.

They move on to other topics, for a while comparing their teenage years, trying to decide which one of them was more reckless and end up in a draw. Moving on in reminiscing, she comes to the topic of him, how it sometimes was weird when Steve was in their history books, but she also knew him from Peggy’s stories, and those two didn’t always meet. Steve has gotten a bit better used to being a historic figure, but he doesn’t really think about it, so he still has to remind himself that yes, he features in history books that everyone ends up reading.

Sharon laughs at his expression, and continues, “One time I got mad at a classmate who suggested you and Barnes had a thing going on, based on some picture in our book.”

It’s not a new suggestion, Steve has googled enough to have ended up on sites where people speculate the exact nature of his and Bucky’s relationship (and he always ends up closing the browser when it happens). It’s different now, coming from a friend, when he cannot just back away, and he knows his face tells a story. Sharon zeroes on the truth immediately.

“Wait, you two really were —?”

“You don’t sound as judgmental as the teenaged you was,” Steve says, and it’s not really a dodge, more just to give himself time to figure out what he wants to say about it.

Because the truth is, Steve hasn’t thought about his and Bucky’s relationship beyond being best friends since he woke up. He has actively  _ not _ been thinking about that one night in Paris and what it meant, what it could have meant. First it was because it was too painful, and now that Bucky is back, and day by day more steady and stable, he’s kept pushing it back because it’s another complication that Bucky doesn’t need. Also because if he let himself think about it, it would sting that it is one of the few things Bucky seems to draw a complete blank on, and Steve doesn’t want that. It wouldn’t really be fair, since there is a perfectly relevant physical reason, close proximity time-wise to the trauma and all that. It’s just simpler not to think about it. 

It doesn’t escape him that it’s something he’s been telling himself long before the war.

Recently he has let it come a bit closer, thinking it would probably come up as a topic with one of his friends, most likely Sam or Nat, and that he needed to decide how to handle it. In the end he hasn’t come to any kind of conclusion, and now he’s here, confronted by the subject.

“The current me is predictably more open-minded,” Sharon says. “But it is a surprise, since I know how you felt and still feel about my aunt, and I know it wasn’t just some cover. It was real.”

“Very much real, and you’re right, it was surprising. It surprised  _ me _ that it happened. Probably wouldn’t have without the kind of special circumstances of the war.”

“How so?”

“You see, war is, when you’re there it doesn’t feel like a real world. At all. It is so strange there, the mindset you get is very different. Because you literally might die any day, and the probability of not making it home is pretty big. On reflection, I think Bucky never thought he’d make it through. And I, well, I believed I would but still didn’t really stop and think about anything after the war.”

“So no thinking about consequences.” She still doesn’t sound judgmental or disapproving, she just listens.

“Yeah. I’m not, I’m not proud of it, of not really thinking about what the fallout would be,” Steve says, and it’s all true. He isn’t. But he doesn’t regret it either. “I’ve known Bucky most of my life, and we’ve been close all that time, and when it happened, it just felt natural. I don’t know if it makes any sense, but that’s what happened.”

“Did Aunt Peggy know, though? Because not a lot got past her and she never mentioned.”

“You’re right about that, she was perceptive about everything, but it was mostly about timing, the way it worked. You see, Bucky was,  _ is _ the most important person for me, so much so that I never really bothered to think about what he was for me. Not until now. Best friend, family, he’s always been all that, but none of the words is really precise. And I think Peggy understood that, as much as an outsider could.”

“She saw you walk into Austria for him after all,” Sharon injects, smiling.

“People really fixate on that,” Steve says, mock indignant. “Technically she decided to get me a ride there on Howard’s plane.”

“But you would have walked, if needed.”

“True. Anyway, there was that, and then there was timing, like I said. Because, even in retrospect it feels,” Steve pauses, reflecting. “It feels both surprising and at the same time kind of inevitable that Bucky and I ended up —”

“Fucking?” Sharon puts, blunt but still teasing, when Steve reaches for a word.

“Well, functionally yes, but it’s not quite the right word. It only happened once, in Paris right before we left on the mission to get Zola. So that’s why Peggy probably didn’t know, because she saw us before, when everything was as it had been for better part of the year, and then the next time it didn’t matter, because Bucky was already gone.” Steve swallows, even the remembered pain still sharp. 

“Makes sense,” Sharon says, and touches his arm clearly conscious of the moment.

“But the teenaged you technically wasn’t wrong, you know,” Steve says, pushing the memories back where they reside. “There are no pictures of us taken between Paris and the train, so at the moment the photo was taken, we didn’t have thing, as your friend put it.”

“The teenaged me is definitely relieved. But I’m not sure if it really mattered, you know,” Sharon says, and the way she looks at him Steve knows she understands, and that this hasn’t put a rift between them. Maybe even opposite of it.

“Yeah, it probably didn’t. Doesn’t,” Steve acknowledges.

 

* * *

 

When he finally figures it out, it’s so obvious that Bucky has a hard time believing he hadn’t known before. He’s on his way to his room after he’d come back from meeting Sam, and it’s so sudden he has to sit down and lean against the wall. He’s right where he usually ends up when he’s not feeling quite stable, and if he believed in a higher power, he’d probably take it as some kind of sign. He doesn’t believe. Not anymore.

He sits there, leaning to the wall and knows he loved Steve, back before he fell.

There is a part of him, the cold and logical part, that understands why it was so difficult to decipher, that even though he had regained enough relevant memories, thoughts and feelings were harder to interpret, and this was something he never acted on. Now that he does have context he finds other memories, related, remembers making sure Steve never knew. Remembers it was something to hide, because it was only Steve’s friendship he had any right to, that he didn’t want to drag Steve down with him.

Another part of Bucky chides himself for not realising. He wonders if it would have made the previous months spent with Steve different if he’d remembered. If he would have been more determined to not let Steve do so much for him, more than he really deserved. He wonders if he had never let himself getting into the habit of sleeping next to Steve sometimes, let himself find out that he in fact does sleep better like that. He knows Steve has also noticed, even if they haven’t talked about it, and it’s another thing that ties them together, keeps Steve tied to his past. There’s him and there is Carter, both of them something Steve doesn’t seem to be able or willing to let go, and Bucky thinks they are holding Steve back from living his life. Steve should move on, find something new. Someone new.

Furthermore, there is the part where he doesn’t know if he loves Steve now. Doesn’t know if he’s capable. With some things it feels like the meaning, the essence has been erased from him, and love is one of those things. He doesn’t know anymore what it is.

There are things Bucky does know, that are explicit and quantifiable. He knows he sleeps better next to Steve than alone. He knows that whenever Steve is in danger there is a drive in him to do whatever it takes to make it stop. He knows he never feels quite so stable as he does when Steve is touching him, or he is touching Steve. He knows that nothing really started to make sense before he came to live with Steve. He knows if he left, slowly things would stop making sense. That last bit should terrify him, to be so dependent on another person, and yet it doesn’t. And he doesn’t leave, he stays with Steve, because he’s selfish, because every good thing he has is somehow connected to Steve. Even if he doesn’t know what they add up to. Doesn’t know what it means.

And there is one part of him that still tells him he should leave, should let Steve get on with his life and not be dragged back into his past, but he doesn’t listen, doesn’t want to listen. He’s not good enough to do that. And now, everything else in him, every selfish bit that keeps him with Steve, is relieved when he remembers what Sam had told him. That Steve is happier. He clings to it, even if there is a part that doesn’t believe it

***

When Steve comes back from DC, Bucky is still sitting in the hallway, and it’s ridiculous and pathetic, because he isn’t even losing time, not in danger of slipping into past. Yet he doesn’t get up, just lets Steve find him there. He does manage an eye contact, to let Steve know it’s nothing to worry about. It’s only halfway successful because Steve always worries, but at least the frown reduces into just a shadow. Bucky takes it. Steve makes coffee and then brings them both cups and sits next to Bucky, leaning to the wall as well. 

They don’t talk at first, Bucky sips his coffee, made exactly as he likes it, and then, because suddenly the quiet is making him fidgety, he asks, “How was she?”

Steve seems surprised, but pleasantly so, and Bucky realises it is probably the first time ever since he came back that he inquired about people other than Steve.

“Peggy was, as expected, I guess. Slowly getting worse, she was tired and hazy but it was kind of funny, I think she had a better grasp on some details than the last couple of times I was there,” Steve says.

“Yeah, that’s been going around,” Bucky lets out without thinking.

“Oh yeah? You’ve been remembering something special?”

“Just getting a clearer picture of what it all meant,” Bucky says, and it’s true, but also a complete evasion. 

Steve smiles, maybe not realising the dodge, touches Bucky’s arm and says, “Come to the living room, the couch is more comfortable than the floor.”

Bucky does, now that Steve pulls him up he can find the energy to do so, and if there is a hint of bitterness in the admission, he does his best to ignore it. Again he lets go of Steve’s hand as soon as Steve loosens his grip, again wondering what it would mean to just not let go. He’s not quite ready to try though, although even the urge is another piece in the puzzle of remembering loving Steve back then and not knowing how he feels now.

They go to sleep, Bucky again next to Steve, who undercut any objections before Bucky even thought about them saying, “Just get in here Buck, I know you haven’t been sleeping, try and not make it any worse.” It’s only then that it occurs to Bucky to consider what Steve feels about him. There are the words from books, that everyone know about, but he wonders if there was something more, like it was for him. And he wonders how it is now for Steve. Because there are things that he instinctively knows that fall out of the perimeter of being friends, how sometimes Steve forgets to be so damn careful, and touches Bucky, obviously not thinking about it. As if making sure he is real. Those moments, almost more than anything, get seared into Bucky’s memory, the ghost of Steve’s fingertips on his face almost burning, and he doesn’t know what it means. Doesn’t want to believe he maybe has a good idea.

Bucky doesn’t mean to say anything, but apparently it’s that kind of a day, and he lets out, “Why do you even bother with me?”

In the dark he hears Steve huff almost like a laugh, and the reply isn’t anything he expects. “Why did you bother with me back before the war, when I was sick and we were poor and freezing?” Steve asks, and Bucky has no answer, nothing he can put into words, but it feels like the truth. Steve continues, “That’s all there is to it. That’s what we are.”

And it may be the truth, but it’s somehow a bitter truth, and Bucky replies, “Sometimes it feels like it shouldn’t be.”

“How come?” Now Steve’s voice is guarded, and Bucky hates having made it that way, but this is something he needs out in the open, needs Steve to think about and not just do things because of some misplaced duty.

“On the helicarrier you just stopped fighting, let me nearly beat you to death. You shouldn’t do that. No one should do that.”

It’s something Bucky has been thinking about, but he has hard time talking about his experiences and memories even on good days, and this is something that’s still raw. Yet, in the darkness it’s suddenly possible for him to say it, even if not easy. Steve lets out a breath and moves, as if to reach out to Bucky, but stops in the middle of it and rolls onto his back, rubs his hand over his face.

“It seemed like the only way to reach you, back then. And it worked, which I’m glad about. And I’m sorry, too, because I know it haunts you. I never wished that, but it’s not like we ever get exactly what we want,” Steve says, and the regret in his voice is obvious.

“Sometimes I dream I killed you there,” Bucky says, the confession feeling wrong in his mouth, even the thought sickening.

“I figured,” Steve says, and rolls onto his side again, reaches to touch Bucky on the arm. “And I  _ am _ sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for my nightmares, Steve.”

“Yeah, I think we’ve established this one I actually do get to apologise for.”

“You don’t have to, I get it. And you’re probably even right,” Bucky admits, even if he hates it. He thinks he might have regained his memories eventually, if left out of cryo, but not as fast, and he’s not sure he wouldn’t have just gone back to HYDRA if he hadn’t recognized Steve then. He adds, “I just wish you hadn’t felt like you could just throw away your life like that.”

“I wasn’t, I was getting my life back. At least as much as I could.” Bucky makes a noise in protest and Steve continues, “Shut up, let me tell you. When I first woke up from the ice, I felt like I had nothing. Everything was unfamiliar, even people I knew had changed. And then came Loki and New York, and it was horrible and at the same time somehow easy, it was something I knew. And I clung to it and got stuck to it, too much. I mean, it’s important, and I think we finally have a sensible thing going on with the Avengers, but.”

“But it can’t be all there is to life,” Bucky concludes for Steve.

“No. It can’t. Only for a long time I didn’t even know what else there could be. I got lost in it, and I kind of lost even the reason as why I was doing it, why I was with SHIELD. Peggy saw it, told me I should get away, although I only realised it afterwards. I don’t know if I even now know how to let go enough, but at least there is something else. Now I have another reason to get out of bed in the morning, and trust me, it’s so much easier, I don’t have to wonder why I bother anymore.”

“That’s —”

Bucky’s thought gets lost in the sudden understanding that Steve really had not been fine before. He hadn’t properly thought about it, even if he’d heard of it from Romanova and Wilson, even from Steve, although in a more roundabout way. But all the time he’s lived here, Steve has been as much Steve as he remembers. It’s only now that all the pieces fall into place, that he really understands. It’s so momentous he almost misses it when Steve starts talking again, this time his voice nearly a whisper.

“You brought me that reason and I know hearing it is a lot. It’s probably unfair of me even saying it, putting that burden on you, but. It’s true, and I’m —”

“Shut up Steve, you’ve apologized enough for tonight. It’s okay.”

They fall silent and Bucky listens to Steve’s breathing becoming slower, more even as he falls asleep, hand still resting on Bucky’s arm. When he’s completely asleep, Steve’s fingers curl a little, holding on to Bucky, and maybe it should make him feel like wanting to escape, but it doesn’t. Instead he just whispers to Steve’s sleeping form, “I’m not going anywhere,” and then he chases sleep.

***

There are steps in recovery, sometimes forward, sometimes back. Bucky knows he’s made another step forward, and maybe that’s what makes him take a chance. He’s spent hours dragging himself through his memories, trying to piece things together. He’s spent considerably less time with the files, even if he took the folder from Steve’s room all those months ago. He leafed through it, read the notes written in Steve’s hand, but it hadn’t really given him any context, and it has lived under his bed for a long time now. 

Bucky gets the file and brings it to the living room. He spreads the pages on the table, sorts through the medical records, mission details, technical notes. Most of it is stuff he knows now, only from his own experience and it is oddly distancing to read the clinical notes. There are names and dates, and he remembers faces that go with them. There are other dates, time periods attached to notes of his reaction to cryogenic freezing. He ends up feeling empty and sad, and doesn’t know if it’s for himself or all the people he killed.

He doesn’t really know what he is looking for, only that he doesn’t find it in the paper files. There are more of course, the whole SHIELD/HYDRA data dump that Stark still hosts and Steve has access to. Bucky’s never really looked into it beyond ascertaining what it was. Now he takes the laptop and logs in. There is a lot of data, more than one can easily sift through, more than a hundred people can easily sift through. There is a rudimentary index, but he knows enough that the structure of the data doesn’t really let itself be easily indexed. There is a file in one of Steve’s folders, though, that seems to track the results of his search, complete with dates and short descriptions of whatever documents Steve had deemed important enough to save links to. The notes stop abruptly months ago, and it takes a moment for Bucky to process that the last date is the day before he broke into Steve’s apartment and then never really left.

There is a link but no description, as if Steve was interrupted in the middle, and suddenly Bucky remembers what he saw from his place of surveillance, Steve suddenly putting the laptop away, the restless pacing for hours afterwards and the short night. He remembers wondering why Steve reacted that way, and also why his obvious distress affected Bucky that much. About that last one he now at least has a bit of an idea. 

He clicks the link and at first doesn’t get why it upset Steve. It’s something from the early days of SHIELD, not even related to anything to do with the Winter Soldier. And then he makes it to the end of the document and sees the accompanying photos. Alexander Pierce, young and handsome, the resemblance to Steve almost uncanny.

It’s not a shock to Bucky; he’s been living with the knowledge of Pierce in his head for all these months. He knows why exactly it was that Pierce was more comfortable with Bucky than anyone else could dream of. Why Pierce could trust himself to be safe even when Bucky was at his most volatile. Bucky knows why the memories of Steve are tangled with those of Pierce. He never mixes the two of them up, and he’s grateful for it, because he doesn’t know what would happen if he did, if he one day looked at Steve and saw Pierce. It’s just patterns, mixing up the expectations.

And yet, this time it feels different. Maybe it’s because it’s a photograph and not a memory, but there is distance now, a barrier between him and all the poison. He leaves the laptop on, the photo filling the screen. Tries to figure out the change.

Steve comes home a couple of hours later, his greeting more cheerful than usual, indicating a good day. Bucky is still curled on the couch, the photo of Pierce still on the screen, and he realises it’s going to ruin Steve’s mood, but by then it’s too late, Steve is already at the door. The change in Steve is sudden and total, from smile to frown, posture changing from relaxed to wary. For a while they both look for words, but Bucky is the first to break the silence. 

“Remember when I first came here, the previous night I saw you were upset about something. Guess I know now what it was.”

“You knew about this. Him,” Steve says, and it’s not what Bucky expected, although he’s not surprised Steve saw this about him.

“I kind of live in my own head a lot of time these days, Steve. Of course I knew,” Bucky points out.

“And you’re not angry,” Steve observes, comes closer and sits gingerly at the edge of the couch.

Bucky thinks for a moment. “I guess not. I mean, when I bother to think about it, I’m mad at him, at everyone there, but this? It doesn’t bother me.” At Steve’s sceptical look he stresses, “Really. It made it easier for them to get what they wanted from me, but there was always going to be something that broke me. If not that, it might have been something that did so much damage I couldn’t ever come back. So. It is what it is.” Bucky shrugs and then asks, “What about you, how do you feel?”

“I don’t know how I feel,” Steve says and grimaces.

Bucky just looks at him. “Don’t try to bullshit me Steve, I may be brain damaged but I know you better than that. You’re mad as hell about it.”

“Well, yeah. It’s just, I don’t know, so unreasonable. It was just pure chance that it happened, and there isn’t really anything to be angry at.”

“Except for yourself, because that’s the kind of idiot you are,” Bucky says. “Look Steve, can you try and not blame yourself for this? It’s not your fault, nothing you could have done. And don’t even start saying you should have done something different in ‘45, I don’t care. Just let it go.”

Steve leans back on the couch and stares into the ceiling for a long minute, and then looks at Bucky, eyes still sad. “I guess I’ll have to take your word for it. I’ll try.”

It’s as good as a promise, when it comes to Steve, and Bucky would worry if he’d basically asked the impossible, except the thought is suddenly derailed, because he realises that there has been a change in him. Now he’s been thinking about Steve and Pierce at the same time, and there hasn’t been the uneasy feeling of walking on a tightrope, where one false step might make him plunge. Somehow now the memory thread of Steve and another of Pierce have separated, running their own course and there is a wall between them. Bucky goes almost liquid with relief at the realisation. He’s not naive enough to think that it’ll be perfect from now on, his head will probably still try to shove Steve into patterns that have nothing to do with him on bad days. But now he knows he’s managed to make a step back from the edge, and it’s everything. 

Bucky realises he’s smiling when Steve’s frown becomes more questioning and less sad, but doesn’t elaborate. He’s not sure Steve would understand, not yet. Maybe someday. Instead he just closes the laptop, banishing the picture from the room and then reaches out and tugs Steve closer. He mostly still doesn’t initiate physical contact, but Steve comes easily enough, and after a while leaning into each other the frown on his face disappears. 

They sit like that, not talking until Hecate comes into the room and demands her dinner.

***

Later in the evening Steve is sketching, difficult as it looks since Hecate lies curled on his lap, and Bucky is stretched out on the couch, trying to ease the pressure on his back. The tv is on and it’s some kind of documentary on Paris that he’s only halfway listening until there’s a mention of a hotel that sounds familiar. The memories about it are vague, but feel like the truth, and he asks Steve, “Didn’t we stay there during the war?”

It’s an idle question, and he certainly doesn’t expect the reaction it gets. Steve glances at the screen and freezes. The sketchbook tumbles from his hand and he opens and closes his mouth a few times before he manages to answer. “We did, in early ‘45. It was our last leave.”

“Oh,” Bucky says, because he has nothing else. He watches Steve gingerly get up, set Hecate on the chair and then leave room. Bucky hears him tinker in the kitchen, empty the dishwasher, drink a glass of water. 

Bucky knows what the last leave means, he knows they and the commandos were in Paris just before their mission to apprehend Zola, even if he doesn’t really remember any of it. None of it explains Steve’s behavior, though. He has talked about those times with Bucky before, and while they always affect him, this is something different. Bucky has no idea what the cause could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, the immediate external crisis is sorted, the internal crisis coming to head. Also the reason for that rating change tag, finally (that slow burn tag isn't there for nothing, as you've seen).


	8. a lover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things, it's all finished, and the rating is now final.

Bucky gasps awake, his heart hammering in his chest, head spinning from weightless vertigo, throat raw from a scream that won’t come. He sits and breathes, listens to the nightly noises of the apartment, the city outside. It’s as quiet as it ever gets; the traffic has died down, everyone in the building is asleep. Steve too, since he can’t hear anything from the other room. It takes a while for him to find his center, to make himself believe it’s 2016 and not 1945. Takes him a while to recognize what his dream means.

He  _ remembers _ .

It’s bits and pieces, but they are all there, ready to be dragged out and examined. He already knows they will hurt, but the pain is infinitely better than the chasm of oblivion, the knowledge that there should be something other than a void. He falls back against the pillows, and allows the memories space to surface.

There is the moment on the side of the mountain; the group waiting but focused, telling rowdy jokes at each other as they tended to do before every call to action. He remembers Steve sitting on his bedroll, sketching even if it was too cold really, even for him, before he got up to check the fastenings of the wire for the last time. 

He remembers thinking he was very likely going to die, alone and trapped in the train carriage, and then the relief when he saw Steve and knew he wasn’t going to after all. Remembers  _ knowing _ he was going to die, only moments later, when he reached and couldn’t grasp Steve’s hand. 

There is the flash of blue light, Steve’s hand roughly shoving him behind him, the endless fall and the vertigo, still bad enough that he has to sit up again, grasp at the edges of the bed. He hears the wood of the bed frame creaking on his left.

There’s Steve hiding relief, saying “I know you did,” and terrified, blue eyes large with shock, yelling his name. His blue-clad form nearly falling after Bucky, curling to itself in grief when it hurtles away on board the train.

There are other memories, fainter, not as significant, because they are much like many others. Days spent on march, reviewing strategies, prepping weapons, dealing out watches among the group. They fade almost as fast as they come, get slotted among every other similar memory from the war.

But there is something else, something that Bucky finds hard to believe is actually a memory. Can’t believe it ever happened, can’t believe he forgot it.

There is a night in Paris, a night when he tried to convince himself he was drunk and did a poor job of it, knew he wasn’t and yet somehow couldn’t make his legs work right. There is Steve’s arm, strong and steady supporting him, his still too large frame radiating heat in the cold drizzle that didn’t let up the whole time they were in the city. 

He remembers Steve’s body flush against his, large warm hands on his skin, kissing and tasting the brandy and Steve. He remembers the wonder of waking and finding Steve still there with him, remembers brushing his lips over Steve’s shoulder, where a scar from a gunshot wound was fading. He remembers how Steve woke up, smiled at him and rolled onto his back, pulled Bucky on top of him.

It is hard to believe it was real, and yet if it wasn’t, then he cannot trust any of his memories, because there is no difference, they all feel equally real. It must have happened, and yet believing it feels like walking on a treacherous ice.

In the now he’s fallen back against his pillows, every nerve of his body alight, breathing hard for an entirely different reason than he did right after waking up. Or maybe it is a similar reason after all, it feels like a very specific kind of terror.

There are things he has either known or found out about bodies, how they work and how they want. Things one can use. And yet, it had been a vague kind of knowledge, something examined from a distance. Absorbed and remembered but not felt. Now though, he does feel, and it’s confusing and wonderful and terrible all at the same time. He wants to touch and yet there is something that feels wrong about it, forbidden. When he can’t stay still anymore he heads to the bathroom and stays under cold water until the intensity is washed away. He knows Steve must have woken up because of the sound of water, decidedly doesn’t think about how to put it all to words.

He doesn’t have to say anything. After he’s finished and dressed, he comes to kitchen and finds Steve halfway through making breakfast. Clearly he’s decided to skip running, and Bucky goes to put coffee on, manages a reply to the good morning in a way that’s not too out of the ordinary. They don’t really hold up conversation, only what’s needed for the preparation of food; pass me that, can you cut up the fruit. The silence is companionable instead of oppressing, as it often is with Steve in the mornings. 

They eat french toast and fruit salad, drink the coffee and Steve flips through the news on the tablet while Bucky pretends he’s mostly interested in the view opening from the dining room window. All through the early morning that’s almost night still Bucky is aware of Steve in a way he hasn’t really been yet, not in a very long time. He’s always been conscious of Steve; has watched the way he moves, his expressions, his words, the meaning behind all of them. Now though, it’s different. His attention is held by the curve of Steve’s wrists when he handles the spatula, the slope of his shoulders under the threadbare t-shirt he’s been sleeping in, the way his hair sticks out at the back and makes Bucky’s right hand twitch, the shine of syrup on his lower lip, an unconscious flick of tongue at it.

It’s too much, too overwhelming, and when Steve goes to shower to get ready for work, Bucky throws on his running clothes and is out of the door without a word. Exercise right after breakfast isn’t ideal even for someone with the serum, but he ignores the unease and lets his feet carry him away from their building, away from Steve. He knows the departure is abrupt, but it’s not like such things haven’t happened before regularly enough, and it’ll pass without a comment. He hopes.

***

They end up at the Stark tower a few weeks later when Steve gets a message that Thor has popped in with Jane Foster, and that Bucky should come in too to get his arm checked. Steve is visibly hesitant when he brings it up, understandably since it would be the first time Bucky visited anywhere since coming back. Bucky isn’t completely comfortable with the idea, but at the same time it rankles him not to be, and hence he agrees. He’s fairly sure Steve knows he’s pushing himself, but there is no comment about it, and they make their way to the tower by foot and subway.

Besides Thor and Jane Foster, who are kind of funny looking couple in that she’s tiny and he’s decidedly not, Bucky gets introduced to Pepper Potts, who he only knew as a voice on the phone before and properly to James Rhodes, who out of his armor is a lot more relaxed. 

At first Steve hovers, but Bucky finds himself to be more at ease than he’d expected, the fact that no one refers to his past doesn’t feel like an evasion, but a thing they all accept and just don’t need to talk about. Clearly someone (either Rhodes or Potts, certainly not Stark) has told Thor and Foster about him, and it’s not awkward, even if Foster clearly has a tendency to get flustered. Because of this, Bucky waves Steve away, and is a little bit surprised when Steve ends up wandering somewhere with Thor. 

Stark works on his arm all the while talking mile a minute, doing a more thorough maintenance than Bucky can by himself, and suggests dozens of upgrades, including designing a whole new arm from scratch, but Bucky declines. He knows how the one he has works, and he really is not comfortable with the idea of letting someone replace it, considering it would require a major surgery, and that probably wouldn’t go well for anyone. In the end Stark seems to give up, for the time being anyway. Bucky supposes it’ll come up again if Stark is even half as stubborn as Steve says. Instead Stark occasionally joins in the conversation about aerospace engineering that Foster and Rhodes are having in the nearby table, and Bucky idly listens to it, until his arm is ready and all the plates closed. Tony wanders to the next table, already absorbed in the next problem, and Potts appears at Bucky’s side.

“If you’re not interested in engineering, I can show you where Steve went, he and Thor went to the gym to spar,” she says, and Bucky nods.

She’s not what Bucky had expected, even if he hadn’t really known what to expect. Steve had told him that she’s the CEO of Stark Industries, but not much else. She seems to be completely at ease, and clearly reads him fairly well, since the moment they’re out of the workshop, she tells Bucky to not mind Tony’s peculiarities.

“I know he can be overwhelming, but he means what he says.”

“It’s a little bit surprise, the turn he’s had regarding me, considering,” Bucky acknowledges and she smiles, wry.

“His parents are a, should I say complicated matter, and he’s likely to go some way overboard when it has to do with them. Not to mention he has a tendency to go all in with everything. It was tough for him, but he understands now, I think, and I’m glad.”

Her eyes soften when Bucky looks at her, questioning, and there is something almost vulnerable about her when she says, “You see, we read you file, and I know something about having whole of your being modified without your consent. A few years ago, during the Mandarin terrorist attacks, I was taken prisoner by the man behind it, and he put me through an experimental process. It was something called Extremis, it made people stronger if they survived. He did it to get to Tony.”

Bucky feels a sour taste in his mouth, that this kind woman had had to go through something like that. “Steve didn’t mention that.”

“I don’t think he knows about the particulars, because I wanted to keep it quiet, and the official story went that I was a prisoner and that was it.” Now there’s steel in her voice. “But it wasn’t, I was experimented on and I survived, and later on Tony and Bruce worked to stabilize it, but it was scary. It was like there was something else in me, just under the surface. For a moment there I was just so angry, unlike anything I’ve felt before or since. I killed Killian, the man behind it all, and I don’t think I could have, if it had only been me.”

Bucky still finds nothing to say, although he sees where she’s going with this.

“So I know a little of how it is to have your choices taken from you, and I’m glad you’re getting help. We’d like to be part of it if we can,” she concludes.

Bucky is moved by it, her sympathy and kindness and strength. “Thank you,” he just says, but means it.

She smiles, sincere and then a little mischievous, “Besides, it’s good that Tony isn’t fighting with Steve anymore. He has few enough friends, so he was totally moping about while having his moral crisis about bringing justice to his parents that he never liked that much and about what that justice was anyway. Not that he’ll admit it but he was. Now he seems to have turned his attention back to the remnants of HYDRA, and I don’t think anyone has problem with that.”

“We certainly don’t,” Bucky says, and only after realises he meant both himself and Steve. “If you ever need help at it, you should ask us.”

“Steve said the same. Well, I think he only meant himself, but I’m glad you both agree. The gym is through there. I have to go see about the company, but it was a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise Ms Potts,” Bucky says, and isn’t really surprised when her parting remark is to call her Pepper.

He slips through the door and comes to a viewing area looking into a large room that’s clearly meant to be a practice space that can be reconfigured into all kinds of obstacle courses. Now the scaffolding and ropes are mostly pulled to the sides and mats are laid out to provide a safe and open space for Steve and Thor. Bucky’s not the only one observing; there is a small crowd nearly pressed to the reinforced glass that separates the viewing area from the practice space. They don’t even notice Bucky coming in, and for a good reason.

Pepper mentioned sparring, and it had made Bucky presume something like hand to hand, one on one combat, but this is something else. Steve has his shield, and Bucky had side-eyed him a bit for bringing it, even if he himself has three guns and five knives and hence no leg to stand on in an argument about paranoia. Yet, it feels wrong that Steve should have to worry about being defenseless, when they were just coming to see friends and  acquaintances. Both of them shouldn’t be paranoid. But, he reflects, maybe at least part of the reason for bringing the shield had been for this, and Bucky hopes so, because Steve looks genuinely happy. 

Steve and Thor are throwing and catching the shield, and it’s more like a game than combat. They have a point system that Bucky begins to figure out while watching. Thor has upper hand for being stronger and faster, not to mention able to fly, although based on Steve’s protestations that seems to be outside their rules. Steve keeps up more or less, though, helped along with him being more familiar with the shield and his ability to just see the angles without really thinking them, which has always seemed superhuman to Bucky. 

It’s clear they’ve done this before, there’s a shorthand in their banter that they keep up, references to previous experiences. Steve seems to almost glow to Bucky’s eyes, so much so that even if there is an actual god in the room he still finds it hard to tear his eyes away from his friend. Then Steve laughs and it strikes Bucky he doesn’t really hear it that often these days. What’s more, he hadn’t really expected to either, because he is still so alienated from happiness.

It’s not jealousy, not really, what he feels. There is an uneasy twist in his belly, a sour taste in his mouth, and even though it’s due to Steve laughing because of Thor, it’s not directed at Thor, but squarely at himself. Because here Steve is with a friend that clearly makes him happy, in a way that Bucky can’t. So it’s not jealousy, nothing so poisonous, but it is wistful, remembering that he used to be able to make Steve laugh, even during the war when he already had more nightmares than he cares to remember.

Part of him wants to just go, leave them be, but the rest of him is transfixed, eyes glued to Steve. Since that morning when he finally remembered the final memories that had eluded him, it has gradually become easier in Steve’s company. He’s been able to look at Steve as he used to, for his expression, meaning in the movement. Now it strikes him again that there is beauty in the movement, just as it is, not dependent on purpose. There are the graceful lines of Steve’s body, the casual athleticism that the serum gave him, honed to perfection with training during the war and probably even more rigorously during his time with SHIELD. 

Bucky feels hot all over, like his skin is just too small, and without even thinking he sheds his coat and wraps it around two of his guns in their holsters. It’s not really a conscious decision, more just an instinct that makes him step through the opening onto the mat and leap to catch the shield in his left hand.

He’d thought Steve looked happy, but somehow Steve still manages to light up when he sees Bucky, and calls out, “Oh hey, it’s my backup. Want to see if Tony’s tinkering had any effect?”

 

* * *

 

At first Steve is hesitant to leave Bucky alone with Tony, even if the issue over Starks has been worked out. He meant to stick around, although Bucky had insisted he’d be fine, since that was what Bucky did, insisted he was fine regardless of the truth of the matter. After a while it occurred to Steve that even if it was stubbornness, and maybe even faking, it was still important, mostly to Bucky. To show himself that yes, he could handle this, could handle anything. And Steve had to admit to himself that maybe it would do him good too to not hover around, because the want in him to coddle Bucky up, to try and protect him from everything, wasn’t really healthy.

He wanders off with Thor, who usually isn’t that interested in science talk. Some people have taken it as Thor not really understanding, but Steve knows better. They’d talked about it, and Thor had explained how the Asgardian science was far ahead that of Earth’s, although the ways they went about things were very different. Hence he doesn’t really care to take part in conversation, since a lot of it would be trying to decipher common meanings. Steve has always thought it is funny how in Asgard they are ahead in many ways, but still in clothing and weaponry stick to things that are considered obsolete on Earth. Maybe all it says is that things will come round again after having been forsaken. The thought is somehow comforting to Steve.

They get coffee at one of the common areas and just catch up with each other, Steve talking about how they are configuring the New Avengers procedures, and about the winter with Bucky. Thor tells him about his treks around cosmos, about listening to rumors but not finding anything definitive, and alternately about living with Jane, trying to work it all out. To Steve it seems Thor has found his balance since the incident with Ultron; back then he still was at least somewhat overwhelmed by the deaths of his mother and Loki.

At one point Thor falls silent and just looks at Steve for a good ten seconds, thoughtful, and then simply states, “You are much happier, my friend. I’m glad.”

Steve doesn’t really know how to answer to it, but Thor is right, and a part of him is pleased it is visible. That despite all the stress and hardship that sometimes is all too visible it’s still the one thing that Thor chooses to comment on.

They decide to go sparring after finishing their coffees. It’s something they used to do a lot when they both spent more time at the tower. It always was a relief for Steve, to have a partner with whom he didn’t have to hold back his strength at all, and who had a suitable temperament, so that it never got too serious. They’d brought in Steve’s shield and Thor’s hammer, and came up with things they could do with them. Later it had evolved into a game of sorts, one that Steve knew he was underhanded in, but didn’t really mind.

This time they don’t even need to talk about what to do; they change into training gear and get the game going. It’s been a while, and they start slow, but soon it’s like no time at all had passed. Steve is peripherally aware that they have spectators, but it’s far from first time, and he just concentrates on angles and doesn’t pay attention to it until there is a sound that differs from the shield striking walls or the scaffolding. Yet it’s a familiar sound, one he heard on a rooftop in the dark more than two years ago, and he doesn’t have to look to know Bucky has the shield.

It’s all different from that time too, because now Bucky has what Steve can only call his game face on, and he honestly couldn’t be more delighted when he calls out to Bucky to join them. They continue the game, now Steve and Bucky as a team, and Thor takes to flight and Steve can’t remember when was the last time he had just so much fun. Bucky isn’t like he was during the war days; his movements remind Steve of all he went through, and yet together they still work. They fall easily into a rhythm with each other, cover the angles together, move with purpose.

After two hours they stop, Steve and Bucky both sitting down to get their breathing to even out, and Thor just for their company, because he isn’t really out of breath. Steve notes some of the tension that is always visible in Bucky is gone, and makes a mental note to try and coax Bucky into sparring more often. His previous attempts haven’t really been successful, but he hopes that maybe it has now changed a bit, as many things have.

As they part, Thor shakes hands with Steve and then Bucky, saying, “It was a pleasure to meet you, friend Buchanan.”

Steve feels like laughing at Bucky’s startled expression at the name, but manages to hold it back. And he thinks it somehow feels right, coming from Thor.

On the way home Bucky is quiet, in a way that he seems to be working his mind over something, not like he’s spacing out. After a bit of coaxing, Steve gets him to admit that what he’s pondering over is mostly ridiculous, and not really worth paying attention to. Steve thinks he could say something about understanding, but decides to try a different approach and points out, “Occasionally I need you to recite nursery rhymes with me after a battle, I think we’re way past feeling self-conscious about that sort of thing.” It startles a short bark of laugh out of Bucky, the first time it’s happened since the war, and even then laughs had been in a short supply. It’s different; shorter, less happy, but Steve treasures it none the less.

Bucky shakes his head and confesses, “When you previously suggested sparring, I always said no, because all I could think of,” Bucky pauses, and Steve knows exactly what he’s thinking, the last time they fought for real. “Well, you know. I had forgotten it didn’t have to be like that, that it could be more like a game.”

Bucky shakes his head again, and Steve can guess where he’s stuck at, thinking about all the things that were taken from him, how he was changed to not think of anything but fighting. He decides to focus on games and not hand to hand with his suggestions to Bucky, and just remarks, “You’d better avoid sparring with Nat then. Or Tony, for that matter. They always go all in.” Then he spots a cafe they haven’t tried yet, and they go in and get ridiculously large mochas. 

***

Steve is ready to leave work after a day of reviewing policies again, and he pauses by his bike for a bit, just enjoying the weather. It rained earlier, and the colors around the facility are bright and fresh, as they only are in the spring when the dust of summer hasn’t yet settled. He looks back towards the building, thinking a bit ruefully that it’s rather funny how he’s managed to make superheroing basically into a nine to five job, excluding the occasional crises.

A spot of red catches his eye on the roof, and he looks again to see Nat sitting there, not having left like Steve thought earlier. She’s clearly in one of her moods, which are sometimes hard to decipher, but that she’s here, out in the open, is a sign she could probably use some company. Steve hangs his shield on the bike and texts Bucky he’ll be back later than usual. There’s no reply, but it’s not uncommon, Bucky only texts when he has something to say, never just affirming.

Steve forgoes the stairs in favor of just scaling the wall, and sits next to Nat on the ledge. She acknowledges him with a nod, but they don’t talk at first. Steve has caught these moods before, and has learned it’s best to let her lead. He takes his time enjoying the evening sun.

Finally Natasha says, “I noticed you gave your tags to James.” Steve hums noncommittally, not at all surprised, and she continues, “I knew they were your old ones, from the war. And that they weren’t both yours. I guess I should have figured out a few things from that.”

“It wasn’t really like that,” Steve starts, and when she glances at him, amused, he continues, “Consciously anyway. At the time I certainly hadn’t figured out, well, a lot of things, and it was long before anything happened.”

“Why, then?” she asks, automatic, and then looks like she wants to take it back, but Steve waves it away. It’s not something he has trouble talking about. Not anymore. He also knows that she’s one of the people Bucky won’t mind if they know.

“After Austria, at the basecamp Bucky told me he had trouble believing it was reality and not just another fever dream. And he said it was easier with me, even if I didn’t look at all like he remembered.”

“So you switched one of your tags.”

“Yeah. I don’t know where I got the idea, but it seemed to help him then.”

Nat doesn’t need explaining, really. “And now that he again has trouble with the reality, you gave him your tags.”

“It seemed like an idea. And I don’t need them anymore.”

“For what it’s worth, I do think they still help,” She says, and Steve smiles, feeling light. He’d thought so himself, but it was good to have confirmation from someone else.

Now that she’s opened up, he thinks he can ask questions himself, even if they are just simple ones. “So how are you doing, anyway?”

“Eh,” she grimaces, and Steve loves it because it’s completely unguarded, meaning she trusts him enough to not keep up walls. “Varies. After Insight I’ve been making up new covers, like I told you I would.”

“But?” Steve prompts when she falls silent.

“It just feels like the wrong thing to do sometimes. I used to,” she pauses and then changes track. “I’ve been thinking, it’s really easy to fall into patterns of behavior, to be what people expect of us instead of what we really are.”

“I know,” Steve agrees, emphatic.

She glances at him, expression complicated. “I talked to James, asked him to tell me something about you, and it was only then I realised we’d done that to you. There were all the files and histories and so much of it that it was easy to forget they weren’t describing a whole person, only the parts relevant to the interests of the writer. And you kind of slipped into it, although I kept noticing it didn’t quite fit. There were details that were wrong, like the tags. I’m sorry we did that.”

“Well,  _ you _ should not apologize, you did take interest in how I was doing outside of SHIELD.”

Natasha smiles. “How’re the herbs doing, by the way?”

“Pretty well. Actually Bucky is the one that mostly tends to them now. They’re putting up little plots for gardening on the roof, I figured we might take one.” Steve isn’t quite ready to be sidetracked yet. “It’s what happened to you too, isn’t it? People expected things of you.”

“Black Widow, highly competent, highly dangerous. No moral scruples. An enigma impossible to figure out,” she rattles sing song, almost like reciting something from memory.

“Right. So what’s Natasha like?”

“Guess that’s what I’m trying to figure out. I just fear I’ve spent so long being all these other people that there isn’t Natasha.”

“You don’t actually believe that though,” Steve says, and then remembers the conversation they had in the stolen car on the way to Camp Lehigh. “I guess all that really matters is what you want you to be. Instead of being what everyone else wants you to be. But you knew that already.”

“I did,” Natasha says and bumps his arm with her shoulder. “But it’s still good to be reminded occasionally.”

They sit there a bit longer, leaning onto each other, and Steve thinks again how lucky he is to have her as his friend. After a while she huffs in a silent laughter and says, “Guess I don’t have to try and find you a date anymore.”

Steve can only laugh with her, and for a change it doesn’t hurt, even if he still doesn’t know whether Bucky ever will remember the extent of their relationship. And that if he does, there’s no guarantee he’d still feel the same about Steve.

 

* * *

 

Things don’t really change that much even though Bucky now remembers. On the outside that is. On the inside he has a whole another array of questions, most of them to do with Steve. He doesn’t watch Steve more, mostly because it would be impossible to. Every second they are near each other he is aware of Steve. Part of it is that he’s aware of everything more or less, often to the point where it makes just getting through the day difficult, but he does know it’s more than that with Steve, always has been.

The difference is that his focus is new, colored with the additional memories from their past, and watching Steve’s actions, he sometimes questions whether he made up the memory after all. Because when he thinks of Steve’s behavior most of the time, it makes no sense to him that they once reached that level of closeness, and now have reverted back.

Sometimes he thinks that maybe Steve has forgotten, because it would explain a lot of things. Only he knows Steve hasn’t, because there was the one moment where he was caught by surprise, by the documentary mentioning the hotel in Paris. Bucky had known there was significance to the place, and now he knows what it is. He also knows why Steve never told him, even when it was one of the few things he didn’t at least partly remember. A lot of things are still a mess in his head, maybe will be for the rest of his life, but that had been the one final gap, the days before the fall. It had been mostly due to him, he hadn’t really been welcoming of Steve talking about memories, not unless he reached a point where he could directly ask about something. Thus the things that he didn’t remember never came up. 

And now he remembers and doesn’t dare to ask.

He doesn’t know what it means that it happened. He knows for him it was more than just sex, more than just craving human touch, even if it was a good deal of that as well. Since the beginning of the war he had learned that there really wasn’t a more concrete way to feel alive, to remember he was something more than just hands wielding a gun. With Steve it had been still more than that, for him at least. He doesn’t know what it had meant for Steve, because they hadn’t talked about it. They’d gotten up and left for the mission. It hadn’t been awkward, there just hadn’t been time. And then they never got around to saying anything that would now give him a clue.

He doesn’t ask, and he keeps watching Steve. Steve is still careful around him, careful about physical contact, which makes sense since Bucky is still skittish about it, still sometimes flinches when Steve touches him. But he doesn’t seem to feel uneasy about it, or wanting more either. And, tentatively, Bucky starts thinking that maybe it was just that, the war and needing closeness and it just happened, didn’t mean anything more. Or if it did, it doesn’t anymore. Seventy years is a long time, even if it’s spent mostly frozen. And Steve never was any good at pretending, not to him.

***

Steve comes home one rainy night, somehow exhausted even though there hadn’t been a mission. Bucky is curled in the corner of the couch with a book, Hecate half on the back of the couch, half on his shoulder. He listens to the sounds of Steve changing clothes and getting something to drink. Steve seems both sluggish and jittery at the same time, similar but not quite the same as when he gets a sensory overload due to his superhuman senses. It’s less intense, but also more familiar, Bucky suddenly realises. He remembers Steve used to get like this when he’d had a long day, maybe having to deal with more people than usual. He remembers that there is a limit that Steve sometimes hits, where being social just grates him. 

He also remembers there are things that help, which is why he puts down his book when Steve flops on the couch next to him. Bucky scoots down a bit, and then tugs Steve closer, gets him to settle half on Bucky, head resting on his right shoulder. Bucky turns the tv on, flips channels until he happens upon a nature documentary where a man narrates something about oceans with a soothing voice, and then settles his hands lightly on Steve.

It’s not something they’ve done so far, Bucky is very keenly aware. They’ve mostly managed leaning on each other, but this is a lot more contact. Maybe if Steve wasn’t so exhausted, he would have been more hesitant to take this next step, but in the state he is it doesn’t even seem to register, and Bucky is grateful. He doesn’t want to think about reasons either, just enjoys the feeling of being anchored down by Steve’s weight and not feeling trapped at all. Hecate hops on Steve’s back and resettles there, and Bucky scratches her head, shifts a bit to get comfortable and doesn’t even bother concentrating on the program, just lets the noise wash over him.

***

Nothing really changes, and they keep on leading a quiet life, as much as they can when one of them is leading the only official superhero group in the world. There are no crises involving HYDRA or aliens or mad scientists. Steve keeps coming home on time.

It’s early summer when Bucky realises that somehow his regular days have changed from staying in the apartment except for nighttime wanderings in the city and mostly only talking to Steve. He’s still fairly reclusive when compared to most people, or to himself back before the fall, but he doesn’t feel like he should be hiding anymore. He goes out more and more during the day. He greets the neighbors and the baristas at cafés. Sometimes he talks with little Luisa Ferreiro about Hecate or anything else she seems interested in if he happens to be out when she comes home from school.

The sparring becomes a semi-regular thing, sometimes at their nearby gym where the owner lets Steve visit outside regular opening hours, or at Stark tower if they want more room, or some of the other Avengers join them. Bucky knows well why Steve keeps inviting them; he wants Bucky to know them and their fighting style so that he’ll be better prepared if he comes on a mission with them, and it’s also to let them get to know him. So far it’s only Wilson and Romanova that have visited their apartment.

There is the new rooftop garden, and they have a small plot in it. Bucky is the one that mostly takes care of it. It’s soothing, watching the progression of the plants and just working in the sun. Not long after his first visit at Stark Tower a parcel had arrived, in it a lightweight mesh glove, that when pulled over his left arm mimics human skin. It doesn’t stand too close scrutiny, but mostly prevents people from staring him, either because they see the prosthetic or because they think it’s odd he’s wearing long sleeves. It helps.

One Sunday he’s up on the roof tending to his herbs, Hecate settled at the edge of the roof. Steve is down on the ground working on his bike and explaining the process to Luisa, who is endlessly curious and apparently delighted to be allowed to help by holding little parts safe and handing Steve tools.

He gets stuck just watching the scene below, and while he is aware that there is someone else on the roof, he doesn’t pay too much attention to it until Romanova is standing next to him, saying, “ _ That _ is positively adorable.”

Bucky turns back to gardening, feeling like he’s been caught out at something, but she doesn’t say anything about it, just hands him a small herb pot. It’s rosemary, which they didn’t have yet, and Bucky isn’t at all surprised she seemed to know that. When he sets to planting it into one of the free spots he has left, she smiles a little mischievously and says, “I thought it would be appropriate, in myths it’s said to improve memory.”

It’s the kind of joke that Bucky probably wouldn’t appreciate from most people, but coming from her he finds he doesn’t mind. She sits down at the edge of the roof, and after he’s done he also settles there. Hecate seems to still be distrustful of her, and retreats to sit on Bucky’s lap. They talk about inconsequential things; about New York, about places they’ve seen, the intricacies of their preferred handguns. It’s easy talking to her now that it doesn’t feel like he’s under scrutiny from her all the time. He’d thought she’d deliberately lessened it, to make him more at ease and make him reveal things, but now that he knows her better, he also knows he’d been wrong. It had only lasted until she had come to a conclusion that he wasn’t a threat to Steve. It’s something he hasn’t told Steve, since he’s fairly sure it would be one of those things where Steve would have a hard time deciding how to take it, but in retrospect he appreciates her distrust, even when it was directed towards him. Maybe especially because it was directed towards him.

She stays for half an hour, and when she’s leaving, she turns back and as if offhand, even though Bucky knows it’s completely deliberate, says, “Happiness is a strange thing. We cling to the smallest bits, and sometimes we get something, or get back something we thought was forever lost, and it makes us so happy that we don’t even dare to wish anything more.”

She’s gone before Bucky has thought up a reply, and he’s left sitting on the roof, trying to figure out the specific point she was making. He has an idea of the shape of it, of course he does, but when he glances down at Steve who seems to be wrapping up his project he starts to think that maybe it wasn’t just him that Romanova was talking about.

He’s been wondering about Steve, about his memories and the significance of the events in them, and now he realises that maybe he was wrong. Maybe it isn’t that it meant nothing to Steve. Maybe it’s that it meant so much that he doesn’t want to risk anything now that there is another chance. Maybe it doesn’t feel like Steve wants something more because he doesn’t let himself want more.

There is a part of him that refuses to believe,  _ cannot _ quite believe it. And the rest of him desperately wants it to be true.

***

On that first day Steve closed the curtains, and they have stayed mostly closed since then. On a Wednesday morning after Steve has left Bucky walks around the apartment for a while, and then goes from room to room, opening all the curtains. Afterwards he walks around the place again, getting used to how the shadows fall. It feels defiant, like he’s not hiding anymore. And it feels right.

Steve comes in at the usual time. Bucky is reading on the couch, and he deliberately doesn’t look at Steve when he stops at the threshold. He waits, but Steve doesn’t say anything, and after a while the silence gets to him. He looks up to find Steve looking at him, not the open windows at all, and there is something in Steve’s expression, beyond just happy, that Bucky can’t decipher. Not an ounce of him is bothered by the fact that Steve could just stare directly at him and he didn’t sense it.

Bucky had done shopping that day and they fry the steaks he got, make side dished out of potatoes and vegetables. He makes a joke about using his assassination skills for cooking while chopping up tomatoes, and it’s probably not even that good a joke. Steve laughs anyway, crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

***

Bucky is sitting at his usual place in the hallway, right across from Steve’s room, but this time the reality is firmly in his grasp. He’s just thinking, and he’d ended up sitting there when he got bored with pacing. He’s deep enough in thought that he only peripherally notes the door and Steve’s greeting. It’s not like he remembers to answer it most of the time, even on good days. It’s one of those things that don’t always register, at least not yet.

Only when Steve crouches in front of him, still wearing his boots and jacket Bucky realises that him sitting there gives an indication of his mental state that in this case is completely wrong. Before Steve manages to say anything, Bucky waves his hand and says, “I’m fine, all here. Just thinking.” The frown disappears gratifyingly fast and is replaced by a quirk of mouth when Steve looks at him for a few seconds and decides he’s not hiding anything.

Steve goes to put his things away, moving about with the usual ease, and before Bucky realises it he’s voicing his thoughts. “Do you ever think about how many coincidences were needed for us to get here?”

Steve comes back and crouches again in front of Bucky. He doesn’t say anything, just looks at Bucky, who is suddenly aware of how blue Steve’s eyes are. It’s another detail that he usually doesn’t pay too much attention to, but now he notices. Bucky continues, “Do you ever think about all the things that could have happened differently, just a tiny bit, and we wouldn’t have met again. Or —” Bucky swallows down the though, not wanting to put in words the thing in his worst nightmares. How wrong it could have gone on the helicarrier.

Steve settles a bit and says, obviously understanding, “All the damn time.”

“When I think about it, it makes no sense. Why did it all go like this? Why did all the things that had to go right happen?”

“Might as well ask why did all things that had to go wrong happen,” Steve adds, looking sad, and Bucky wants to say something to make it go away, because he knows the source of the sadness. Source of all the guilt Steve carries. Steve continues, “I don’t know why. One could say that us ending up here was meant to be. Or that it was just as likely as any other scenario, it just happened that way. I don’t know. I do know that some things that happened I regret. And others I’m grateful for.”

“Before you would have been the one to say it was meant to be,” Bucky says, suddenly remembering.

“Yeah,” Steve admits, and shrugs. “Guess I’m having a harder time to believe in that kind of thing any more.”

“What do you believe in then?” Bucky asks, suddenly needing to know.

Steve just looks at him, and then he smiles, small but earnest. “This,” he says, and makes a gesture between them. There’s nothing Bucky can think to say to it, and Steve rises and extends his hand. “Come on, Buck, the couch is much more comfortable.”

Bucky takes the hand, lets Steve pull him up and that could be it. He could just let go and follow Steve into the living room. They would maybe watch a movie, cook or order in and spend another quiet night. It could go that way, if he didn’t do something he has contemplated on for months now. There has been the question what would happen if he held on when Steve released his grip. Now he’s decided to find out.

He doesn’t let go of Steve’s hand.

Steve is already turning to head for living room, and Bucky holding on makes him stop short. He turns back, agonizingly slow in Bucky’s opinion, and just looks at their hands, his own fingers still relaxed. It probably takes only a few seconds, but to Bucky it is like an eternity, when it feels like every inch of his skin is an exposed nerve. 

And then.  _ Then _ Steve looks up from their hands into Bucky’s eyes, tightening his grip again. And the last bit of doubt over whether Bucky had imagined what happened in Paris is whisked away by the look in Steve’s eyes.

 

* * *

 

It is completely unexpected when it happens, even if later Steve can’t quite figure out why it was so unexpected, when it was all he wanted. Maybe that is exactly the reason. Maybe because he wanted so much, he pushed it away. Told himself not to want, not to expect anything more when he already had got so much back. It would be selfish to want more. But he knows, has always known, that there always was a streak of selfishness in him, same as in everyone else. And it tended to come to surface especially when it came to Bucky.

He’s tried to keep his distance, at the same time without doing so, because he knows the last thing Bucky needs is to feel like he’s being pushed away. And it was easier in the beginning, when they weren’t so close, when Bucky was still skittish and shied away from contact. Now that there is touching; leaning on each other or sleeping next to each other, it is a lot harder to not think about what happened in Paris, the memories of which loom large in Steve’s consciousness, even if it was just one night. But it was one very significant night.

He’s done his best to keep it at the back of his mind, to keep the touching casual when it needs to be, meaningful on other times, but never asking for anything Bucky isn’t ready to give. It’s happened so many times before that he doesn’t even think about it, just gets back on his feet and offers his hand to Bucky to pull him up. He lets go as soon as he can, expecting that Bucky will do as he always does; lets go as well. 

Except Bucky doesn’t; he keeps holding on to Steve’s hand, and for a long three seconds Steve just stares at their still joined hands, his own limp with confusion, Bucky’s strong and determined. His mind is racing, going through all the implications, all the possible outcomes. Because now everything depends on how he acts, and for another second he can’t decide. It’s like standing on the edge where falling most likely will be bad, and he doesn’t know what the right action is. He knows what he wants to do, of course he does, but he doesn’t know if it’s what he should do just this moment.

It’s only when he lifts his eyes to Bucky’s and sees the truth there, sees that Bucky remembers, at least enough, that Steve knows there never were any choices here. There is only one path he can walk down now.

He stops thinking and lets instinct guide him, does what he has so many times wanted to do. He pulls Bucky closer and ends up with his hands at the sides of his head, lips on Bucky’s lips. And then Bucky opens his mouth and they are kissing and everything slides in place like he only remembers it happening once before.

In Paris the night that Bucky probably wasn’t that drunk at all, and had ended up kissing Steve, for a moment he’d been confused and then it had felt like mists suddenly lifting and everything becoming clear. Everything he’d always known but hadn’t dared to think about had suddenly been right there in his consciousness, undeniable. Right then he’d known he’d always loved Bucky, one way or another, and that it actually wasn’t a step at all to bring that love into physical realm. Even if he’d never acknowledge it in so many words. He hadn’t, and Bucky hadn’t either, and nothing really had changed. 

Now it’s 2016, a year that he still tends to call the future, and Bucky is here with him and they are kissing again. It’s the same as it was back in Paris, because somehow even when they’ve both changed so much, they still fit together as well as they always did. And it’s different, both on surface level, as Steve notes when he tangles his fingers in Bucky’s hair, still kept long, and on a deeper level. They’re not kissing like they used to, and it’s not because they have more experience; Steve has some, not much but some, and he  _ hopes _ that Bucky doesn’t. There is a different quality to it, there’s something rougher and more demanding, and Steve doesn’t even know who demands and what, but at the same time it’s less urgent. Now they have time.

And there is the clarity; it feels like the pieces Steve had thought lost forever, maybe hadn’t even known to miss, suddenly slide back to place and it’s kind of a pain almost, to not miss anything, not for a while.

Steve slides his hand behind Bucky’s neck, just to hold him steady and lets his other hand explore, to slide down Bucky’s chest and then under his shirt to his back. Bucky keeps kissing him, letting Steve lick into his mouth, and makes short work of the buttons of Steve’s shirt. Steve can’t help the groan that escapes him when Bucky lays his palm on the skin over his ribs, smooths its way down. Bucky huffs a laugh in between kisses and pushes the shirt down from Steve’s shoulders with his left hand. It’s still cool against Steve’s skin, although he knows it’ll warm up fast, and it sends a shiver down his spine, a new kind of thrill he hadn’t expected.

They’re still in the hallway, but Steve pushes Bucky into his room and towards the bed. They only stop kissing to get rid of Bucky’s t-shirt, and Steve is momentarily so disoriented by the expanse of skin that when Bucky tugs him the last few steps to bed they end up falling in fairly gracelessly. Steve lands on Bucky’s left arm and it would make a hell of a mark if he bruised as he used to before the serum. It still hurts, but he just laughs at their clumsiness, and doesn’t resist at all when Bucky rolls him on his back and bends over him, kisses the laughter away.

Steve is happier than he can remember being, and finds that one can be truly lost in a kiss, in another person. It’s something he hadn’t known, maybe couldn’t have known until now, because he thinks it must be someone special, in a right kind of circumstance. On just another day maybe, with as great a certainty as one can have that there will be countless more days in the future. He thinks it requires safety, such as they couldn’t have found in Paris, not in the whole of 1940s.

Steve kisses Bucky, lets Bucky’s tongue into his mouth and smiles at the hiss he gets from sucking it in, or from gently nipping Bucky’s lower lip with his teeth. He lets his hands explore, careful to keep away from Bucky’s left shoulder. Even in the haze of happiness he knows they’re probably not even near Bucky being fine with being touched there, and he doesn’t want to risk anything going wrong now. He runs his hands over Bucky’s ribs, that are still somewhat closer to skin than he would like. There are unfamiliar marks on the skin, the different texture of scarring. Remnants of the decades Steve doesn’t like to think of. He can’t smooth them away from Bucky’s skin, just as he can’t ease the memories, but Bucky instinctively pushes against his touch, muscles flexing under Steve’s fingers. At least this is something he can give Bucky; if giving even is a right word, when there nothing else he’d rather do.

Bucky moves from kissing his lips to his neck, and there’s a sudden sting of teeth that drags a ragged breath from Steve. Kissing was one thing, he could have kept doing it all day, but now there’s suddenly the urgency again, the need to touch Bucky everywhere, need to be touched by Bucky. 

Steve pulls Bucky on top of him, skin on skin as close as he can get, lets his fingers dig into Bucky’s back and is rewarded by Bucky suddenly sucking breath hard and aligning his hips with Steve’s. Steve lets his legs fall open for closer contact, and he’s hard already, hadn’t even realised it happening when he’d been so immersed in just kissing Bucky. Bucky shifts against him, rubbing their groins together. Steve lets out a sound that probably could be classified as a whimper, but he doesn’t care, not when he can feel the smile it brings on Bucky’s lips on his skin. Not when it means that Bucky very deliberately pushes against him and moves again to kiss his lips.

For a moment they keep kissing and moving against each other, Bucky’s metal fingers dig into Steve’s side just enough to bruise, and he could come this way, Steve realises, but he needs more. He pushes at the waistband of Bucky’s jeans and thankfully Bucky gets the message, because Steve doesn’t think he has enough words in his head to say anything at all. Bucky gets rid of his jeans while Steve struggles with his own, and he’s never hated buttons and little zippers as much as he does now. He barely gets them open before Bucky yanks them down, his underpants going along. He kicks them off his ankles while pulling Bucky close again, knowing he won’t last long. Judging by the slightly glassy way Bucky looks at him, he’s not far away either.

They press against each other again, Steve wraps his legs around Bucky’s hips to get as close as possible, wraps his arms around Bucky because he never again wants to let go. He scrapes his teeth lightly along Bucky’s jaw line, exhilarated by the rasp of stubble on his lips, and Bucky’s breathing becomes ragged, the press of his hands more urgent. Steve surrenders to the sensations; the closeness, movement of Bucky’s skin against his, Bucky’s fingers digging at his hip in a way that  _ will  _ bruise. He knows he’s making noise but can’t really hear it, it’s all drowned in the feeling and now. Then Bucky bites him on the collarbone, and it’s what sends Steve over the edge, his orgasm exploding in his head. Faintly he feels Bucky shudder against him and then go limp, completely relaxed on top of Steve.

For a moment they just lie there, not moving a muscle, breathing in unison. Steve feels faintly amused by the fact that they just came like that, just rutting against each other like schoolboys, but he doesn’t care. There is time to do so much more, to touch Bucky everywhere, to put his mouth on every last inch of Bucky’s body like he’s dreamt of doing and never had the chance before.

After a while Bucky rolls off him, but doesn’t go far, just lies on the bed next to Steve more relaxed than Steve has seen him since he came back. Even in sleep Bucky always seems tense these days, but now it all appears to have seeped away. Steve finds his sleepshirt he’d left in bed and uses it to wipe the come off their skin. Then he turns on his stomach and throws his arm over Bucky’s waist, closes his eyes. 

Steve drifts awake later. He doesn’t know how long he slept but Bucky’s still there lying next to him, slightly restless in the way his fingers draw patterns over Steve’s skin, but not like he wants to leave. It takes a while for Steve to wake up enough to realise that Bucky’s hands keep finding the now almost disappeared scars Steve had received on the helicarrier, and then ghosting over his shoulder where the skin is unmarked by now. Steve remembers the last time they lay together like this; he woke up with Bucky’s lips on his shoulder, as if he could make the scar from the only gunshot wound Steve had suffered in the war disappear. Steve had fully known it could have been much worse that day, he might have died instead of being wounded if it hadn’t been for Bucky and his reflexes, that then had seemed miraculous and now were perfectly explainable. It had been another day when Bucky saved Steve’s life, another reason for a star on his side where Bucky’s hand comes to rest.

Steve pulls Bucky a bit closer, head full of everything he wants to say but doesn’t. He knows it’s not the time for that yet, knows that Bucky probably wouldn’t know how to hear them and because of that they’d catch wrong in his head. But it’s okay; Steve puts it all into another kiss.


	9. visions made of flesh and light

It’s July Fourth, and and the apartment is silent. The blinds are closed and the air conditioning is off. On the table is the book that never quite made it back onto the bookshelf after Bucky came back to Steve, open near the end. On the page a short passage is marked.

_And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good._

Hecate isn’t far, she’s currently curled in bed next to Luisa Ferreiro, who to her infinite irritation is sick on the holiday. She was delighted they were asked to look after Hecate for a few days, and has diligently given her food and all the chin scratches she could want.

Bucky and Steve are away from the city, in what can only be called middle of nowhere. They are far enough from all the people that they don’t have to care about the celebrations. No loud bangs to remind them of the war, nor the occasional flashes of light that strike too close to the HYDRA guns’ blue. No lingering smell of smoke. There is only darkness, quiet and a sky that seems endless, full of stars that one would never see if they spent all the time under the lights of a city.

They’re lying on a ridiculous air mattress that Stark had sent them. It’s self-inflating, well insulated, fits the two of them easily and holds its shape under their weight. It’s pretty much perfect, and Bucky knows there’s no way Steve will admit thinking so, least of all to Stark. The sun set hours earlier, and it’s finally getting cool after a sweltering day. They still haven’t dressed up, not even Bucky, who generally gets cold earlier. There is a blanket at arms reach, but he’s warm enough, sprawled half on top of Steve, Steve’s hands idly running up and down his back.

Bucky enjoys the closeness since it’s the kind of day he can. He’s grateful it is one of those, and he avoids thinking about the significance of the day, as he avoids thinking about how comfortable he is. He doesn’t usually think about those kinds of things, about his happiness, because when he does, there is inevitably the guilt waiting for him. There is the knowledge of everything he’s done, and the certainty that he doesn’t deserve any of this. Doesn’t deserve to be happy. Doesn’t deserve to be safe. Certainly doesn’t deserve Steve and everything his eyes tell Bucky when all his guards are down, even if he never puts it to words.

When he thinks of all that, he gets twitchy, and then it’s difficult to endure physical contact. And Steve doesn’t deserve the rejection, even if he understands why it happens. Sometimes Bucky thinks Steve understands him better than he does himself, but it doesn’t really help. Not when he knows how Steve relaxes on these moments when they’re just lying down tangled in each other. Because Steve certainly deserves that, deserves to be happy. And in a way it lets Bucky off the hook, mostly anyway. Because every day he is astonished that he actually can have this, that Steve wants this, and he knows that he’s not one to turn it away.

Sometimes when he mulls the dilemma in his mind, even when he’ll never actually act on changing anything, he catches Steve looking at him, all gentle, as if he wants to tell Bucky to stop feeling guilty about being happy. Bucky knows it’s what Steve thinks, even if he’ll probably never end up saying it. That’s why he doesn’t think about it too much, and just tries to hold on to the good moments for a long as he can.

Bucky idly traces his fingertip over Steve’s ribs, where he knows the tattoos are even if he can’t see them in the dark, mind still reeling at the knowledge of their significance. Someday maybe he’ll ask about them, because there are seven stars and he can’t connect all of them to a specific memory. Steve had said each of them was for Bucky saving his life, and Bucky doesn’t remember seven times. He doesn’t feel quite up to it yet though.

Earlier he’d kissed Steve right over the black lines, not to mention everywhere else, and he still feels the pleasant soreness inside that comes from relentlessly riding Steve until they both probably saw stars, even before the sunset. They are still learning about each other, there are still new ways for him to discover that drive Steve to the brink of distraction. He knows they probably have time to find out it all, but he carefully avoids thinking about that too much either. It all still feels too fragile in his head, even if what they have is anything but fragile, considering how much it’s been tested.

There is a gust of wind and Bucky shivers involuntarily. Steve reaches for the blanket and with a little maneuvering they are mostly covered. Bucky ends up tucked more to Steve’s side this time. It’s still easy and comfortable, and as usual talking is easier in the dark.

“Inside the book you gave me, before the war, I’d written a letter for you,” Bucky starts, not quite sure how to frame the question, but it’s something he’s felt curious about for a while.

“I found it,” Steve says, and Bucky is grateful, because it means no one else had. Steve continues, “I had it with me when I went down in the plane, it got destroyed in the water. Why didn’t you ever send it?”

Bucky lifts his head, but his incredulous look is mostly lost in the dark. “You know why. It said too much, the kind of things I wasn’t too keen on having the censors looking through.”

“And me?” Steve asks, and at least he doesn’t sound uncertain. Bucky is fairly sure he’s in fact smiling.

“When I wrote it, I didn’t know. But guess it doesn’t matter now. Wouldn’t have mattered then,” Bucky says and lies back down.

“Good. Because I remember every word,” Steve says, mock serious.

“You and your photographic memory,” Bucky just grumbles, and settles in the feeling of Steve’s arms tightening around him.

Bucky has enjoyed the trip; the quiet, no fireworks, the ease with Steve, but in a way he most enjoys knowing that Steve’s shield is back home, leaning to the wall in the hallway. Since he came back, Steve has carried the shield pretty much everywhere excluding trips to stores and his morning runs or more leisurely walks with Bucky. It has seemed like a reflex; leaving the apartment means taking keys, wallet, phone and the shield for Steve. When they left this time, Steve hadn’t even looked at it, and it was only in the car, sensing Bucky’s inquiring look that Steve had said anything. It had been flippant, “What do I need the shield for when I have you?” Bucky still knows that Steve meant every word regardless of the tone.

It isn’t just that Steve doesn’t need it for safety, since Bucky has three guns and four knives, not to mention a cybernetic arm capable of punching through a brick wall. It means that Steve isn’t after all so tied to the shield and by extension the Captain America persona that Bucky has initially thought and feared he is. It doesn’t mean Steve is going to quit, and Bucky doesn’t even want that, he likes how Steve is with a purpose. But it is something that shouldn’t take over all of Steve’s life, and now he has proof it doesn’t.

They fall asleep under the stars and wake up at the first light, ready to head back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, all finished. I'm fairly happy with it actually.
> 
> I've got a few more ideas for this verse; a few somewhat plotty things, set both before and after this story (including one about Bucky's winter soldier years, won't that be fun for everyone). Then I'll probably do a few about other characters within this verse (I've got vague ideas for Nat, Sharon and Sam). Also I have a file in the folder for this verse titled "Steve and Bucky have all the sex", which is exactly what it sounds like.
> 
> These will have to wait a bit though, next I'll need to work on my Big Bang fic.
> 
> Thank you everyone for reading, kudos and comments. If you have questions or whatever else chime in at the comments or at my [tumblr](http://stellahibernis.tumblr.com/post/128181916287/the-map-of-my-heart-the-landscape-after-cruelty), I'll be happy to talk about this story, or Steve and Bucky and MCU things in general.


End file.
